


Teach Me How to Swim

by RainbowKittyPrincess (PrincessSmuttButt)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Bartender!Kuroo, Boys in dresses, Cats, Childhood Friends, Depression, Homophobia, KuroKen - Freeform, M/M, Queer Themes, Rape, Romance, Self-Harm, Sexual Assault, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Triggers, fuck gender roles, game designer!Kenma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:50:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8562745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessSmuttButt/pseuds/RainbowKittyPrincess
Summary: Tetsurou Kuroo, bartender at the Black Cat, and Kenma Kozume, a brilliant independent game designer, have been friends since before they can even remember. After growing up together, they live in an apartment above the Black Cat. But their relationship is not without its issues. When they lose control one night and make what seems to be the biggest mistake of their lives, things begin to change. And then, in the midst of the turmoil, they are struck with a tragedy neither could have ever expected. They suddenly find themselves struggling to navigate the terrifying, merciless, beautiful world around them, trying to define just what it means to fall in love.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for clicking on my story, "Teach Me How to Swim." 
> 
> I'm going to start off by being very clear, because I do not want to trigger anybody or make anybody feel physically uncomfortable. So here are the trigger warnings: 
> 
> There is explicit rape in this story. 
> 
> There is discussion of self-harm in this story. 
> 
> There are suicide attempts in this story. 
> 
> There is extensive discussion of depression and anxiety issues in this story. 
> 
> There are explicit sexual descriptions in this story.
> 
> Please take care of yourselves. 
> 
> That being said, this story is a bit special to me. I love Kenma and Kuroo a lot--they are, I think, my favorite ship in Haikyuu (though IwaOi comes a close second) because I feel like they just have such an amazing and passionate dynamic stemming from their childhood friendship. It always seems to me that Kuroo goes out of his way to take care of and protect Kenma. 
> 
> I also have the idea in my head of Kenma just saying a big "fuck you" to gender roles and being obsessed with dresses and skirts and makeup. 
> 
> This is not a lighthearted story. There is romance, and there is fluff, and there's a lot of cat...but it's not lighthearted. In fact, it's rather dark and heavy. 
> 
> That is my warning to you as you (I hope) continue. 
> 
> The story is finished, and I'll update about every two or three days.
> 
> I poured my soul, as always, into every word, and I genuinely hope that you enjoy my story and that, in the end, maybe it can be meaningful to you. 
> 
> xoxo

**1**

**Kuroo**

Tetsurou Kuroo checked his watch. It was three AM, and the bar was finally empty. He swiped a towel across the counter, put the chairs up, locked the front door of the Black Cat, and took off his vest. He was tired, glad that it hadn’t been a busy night. Sweeping wouldn’t be so bad tomorrow. He counted the money in the register, smiled in satisfaction, and went toward the back door, leading to the stairwell up to his flat. Everything was quiet, so his footsteps on the stairs creaked and echoed as loudly as cymbals. He opened the door quietly in case his roommate was sleeping (who was he kidding, his roommate wasn’t sleeping), and when he stepped inside he was bathed in total darkness. He let the door click closed. When he was fully inside, he noticed that it wasn’t exactly total darkness. In the back room, through a door that was hanging ajar, was a little bright light.

“I’m home,” he called, smiling. And, as usual, there was no response. “I’m turning the lights on now.”

He turned on the lights. The flat was relatively organized, but there were clothes and some empty food wrappers that he would have to clean before going to bed. The work of his roommate who, unlike Tetsurou, didn’t worry so much about the cleanliness of the flat. He took his shoes off, knowing that even though his roommate wasn’t responding, he was there, listening to every word, waiting for Tetsurou to pop into the room. Which, after walking across the room, he did. Leaned his arm against the doorway.

And, as always, his roommate and best friend was there. Sitting on the ground, legs curled up to his chest, one hand around a bottle of Coke and another fiddling on the keyboard of a computer. He was wearing an oversized sweatshirt—one might’ve assumed it was Tetsurou’s, but he just had a habit of buying clothes that were three times his size—and short lace shorts, pink knee-high socks. His hair reached just below his shoulders, with black roots and blonde locks. Tucked behind his ears.

“You really should sleep,” Tetsurou said with a shake of his head.

“And you should really fix your hair, but here we are,” he shrugged. He didn’t even look away from the computer screen. It looked to Tetsurou like he was coding.

His name was Kenma Kozume, and he’d been Tetsurou’s best friend for years, though he was a year younger. After he’d graduated, he and Tetsurou had moved into this flat together.

“Like you’re one to talk about hair upkeep,” Tetsurou scoffed.

“Mine looks good.”

“Cute as fuck since I dyed it for you.”

“Bite me.”

“So, what are you doing?”

“Coding.”

Tetsurou walked in (it was Kenma’s room, so it was ridiculously messy), and plopped down next to him. Their arms pressed together as Tetsurou stretched his legs out.

“New game?” he asked.

“Yeah. Just brainstorming.”

As they fell into comfortable silence, Tetsurou suddenly felt a soft pressure against his other arm. He glanced over. It was one of their cats, the orange striped tabby, Kenma Jr. She was rubbing her head against his arm. He picked her up and put her in his lap, where she curled up and began to purr. Then, as per usual, their other cat, completely black, Kuroo Jr. moved to Kenma’s side. She nuzzled him affectionately, and meowed softly when he stroked her head. Kenma tended to prefer the cats to any human contact. One of his more charming qualities, Tetsurou mused.

“What’s the new game about?” he asked.

“Not telling.” Kenma, a brilliant independent game designer, tended to stay reserved about his games until they were ready. Claimed that having anyone else know disturbed his creative process.

“Right.”

“How was work?”

“Good. The usual. How about you come down tomorrow night? You’re always cooped up in here.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I really wanna finish this game.”

“Kenma’s favorite quote.”

Kenma glared at Tetsurou from the corner of his sharp eyes, batted his thick eyelashes, then went back to his computer. Tetsurou smiled and tried to concoct a plan to finally get Kenma out of here.

Since Tetsurou had known him, Kenma had been overwhelmingly anti-social, locking himself away to play video games. He never went anywhere without his 3DS. It hadn’t been so bad when he was younger—Tetsurou had managed to get him outside, play with other kids, participate in sports and study for exams. Tetsurou had been like his private tutor and absolute best friend. Since they’d met, living next to each other in the same neighborhood, they’d almost never been separated. But, even with Tetsurou by his side, Kenma’s tendencies had gotten worse with age. It wasn’t as if he had had a bad, abusive childhood or was bullied. He just became more withdrawn, to the point that Tetsurou had started dragging him to weekly therapy sessions. At the very least, it would help him talk to people. But it was strange. Kenma could move hearts and minds and souls with his games, and his fashion sense was so cute that it didn’t make sense that he hardly left the house.

However, Tetsurou wasn’t the type to give up on anything. And, in the end, he was the only one Kenma could turn to.

Which wasn’t to say that Tetsurou was doing it selflessly—he needed Kenma, too. He was Tetsurou’s best friend, as close as a brother to him.

“You have an appointment tomorrow, right?” Tetsurou said. His eyes on Kenma’s apathetic features.

“Yeah. Can you take me?”

“Of course. I’ll even do your hair for you,” he winked.

“You can’t even do your own.”

“True enough.”

Kenma Jr. hopped off Tetsurou’s lap and began to walk over the keyboard, inadvertently messing up the codes that Kenma had been working on. Exasperated, Kenma hugged his legs and heaved a quiet sigh.

“Great. Thanks, Kenma Jr.”

As if saying you’re welcome, Kenma Jr. meowed, and then lay down on the computer.

“That’s all right. You can fix it later, yeah?” Tetsurou reached his fingers up and began running them through Kenma’s hair. Kenma loved Tetsurou playing with his hair. He said that it helped calm him down and make him feel okay. He would braid it, tie it in pigtails, brush it. He’d gotten very good with hair. He was even the one who cut it and dyed it for him every month.

Then, he noticed tears gathering on Kenma’s eyes. He started shaking, gently, and tightening his grip on his legs, and biting down on his lower lip. They were the signs. For weeks he would hold everything in, absolutely everything, and then in random explosions, everything would come out. It only happened when he and Tetsurou were alone, never even with the therapist. And even Kenma couldn’t explain them. Something small would trigger them. Like his game shutting down, or hearing the cats cry, or watching a movie. Or Kenma Jr. messing up his codes.

“I just feel really sad,” he would say. “I need to cry. Could you just...could you just wait, there, until I’m done?”

Tetsurou always sat in silence through the tears, his hands in Kenma’s hair. He hated that he was so accustomed to this.

_There must be something else I can do,_ he always thought. _This can’t be it._

But he didn’t know.

So now, he did what he could do. He wrapped his arm around little Kenma’s shoulders, twirling his fingers in Kenma’s long, tangled hair. He was quiet as he cried, the tears rolling down his cheeks, and Tetsurou didn’t say anything. Just leaned his cheek against Kenma’s head and held him.

Usually, Kenma would cry as quietly as he could for about half an hour, and then go right back to normal.

Today, for some reason, something changed.

Somehow, Tetsurou had been expecting it.

Kenma’s fingers grasped for Tetsurou’s shirt, and he turned and buried his face in Tetsurou’s neck. He was so warm, fit so nicely into the crook of Tetsurou’s long arm. His tears were wet and Tetsurou wondered what they tasted like.

“Hey, Kenma...”

“You smell really nice, Kuro.”

Tetsurou was a bit surprised at the comment. Kenma had sometimes said things like this, when he was sleepy or a bit drunk, but he didn’t seem like either of those things right now. He just seemed sad, terribly sad, and Tetsurou felt the urge—an urge he’d been feeling more and more lately—to hold Kenma more tightly. So he did. He must have showered earlier. He smelled like flowers.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

Even though he said it, Kenma didn’t sound like he knew. He sounded lost and tired.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Tetsurou whispered. “I’m not a therapist, but I’ll listen. I want to know.”

“I don’t know. I just feel scared and sad.”

Something was changing, and Tetsurou knew now (finally) that he wasn’t the only one who felt it. This must’ve meant that Kenma felt it, too. A heat that had never been here before.

Lately, Tetsurou had been noticing new things about Kenma, things he used to notice about pretty girls who walked into coffee shops, elegant professors at school, celebrities plastered on the televisions. Like the way his hair fell so gently against his small, curved back, and the little ridges of his spine that were visible through his oversized sweaters. Like the way he put so little of his lips around the edge of the bottle when he drank, always from bottles. Like the way his fingernails looked when they tapped away on the keyboards of his computer, how vacant the glassy look in his eyes. Like the way he pouted a bit when he smiled, and after he spoke, and in between bites when he was eating. Little, insignificant pieces that made Tetsurou’s heart slowly cave in on itself.

He’d been pushing away his thoughts, desperate to bury them, but now that he was holding Kenma like this they were flaring up again with a vengeance. Waves forced down to the bottom of the ocean that were coming up as a tsunami now, washing over everything.

“It’s okay. I’m here. You can be sad and scared, I’m here.”

Tetsurou was nervous when he put his lips, cautiously, gingerly, against Kenma’s scalp. Dipping his toe into the water, to test the temperature. His hair was so soft. He was scared that the move was too bold, that maybe he was just confused about what he was feeling. He’d been friends with Kenma for so long...maybe it made sense to be confused, he wondered. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe...

But Kenma leaned into his lips until they were pressed heavily against his head. He grasped Tetsurou’s shirt more tightly, his long nails nearly digging into the skin of Tetsurou’s chest. Is this what had been building? Since Tetsurou had first thought, _when did my best friend become this lovely?_

“Kenma...”

Kenma sniffled once. Tetsurou closed his eyes and tried to think of the consequences of jumping, as Kenma pulled him forward. Jumping over this cliff that he’d been approaching for a while, unaware that Kenma had been right next to him the whole time. The territory at the bottom of the abyss was completely unknown. Right now they were on the edge of their comfortable, happy friendship, but jumping would mean leaving that behind for something new and different. It would mean leaving certainty for uncertainty.

_Don’t do it, Tetsurou._

_Don’t do it._

_He’s just emotional, and you care about him too much, don’t do it..._

When Tetsurou cupped Kenma’s cheek in his hand and positioned his head so that he was looking down into Kenma’s watery eyes, he suddenly lost the ability to think about consequences. It appeared that Kenma was in a similar situation, cheeks rosy and lips parted. He closed his eyes slowly and tilted his chin up higher. Letting his lips fall even more open. Stray strands of hair clinging to the tearstains on his cheeks.

_Kenma..._

“Kenma.”

Tetsurou and Kenma jumped.

Tetsurou kissed his lips slowly, at first. Kenma’s were quivering. He started light, careful. As his mouth curved to fit the shape of Kenma’s, Kenma pulled on Tetsurou’s shirt. Pulled him closer, shifted his legs to reach further up. After about a minute, Tetsurou pulled away, keeping his fingers cupped around Kenma’s chin. There were more round, shimmering tears in his eyelashes.

“Kenma, are you...?” he began quietly. Kenma closed his eyes and shook his head. Tetsurou’s nerves flared up again.

“I don’t wanna talk anymore,” he murmured. “I’m just tired and I want you to kiss me.”

“Are you sure, Kenma?” Tetsurou put his forehead against Kenma’s. Now that they’d started, he wanted this. He realized that he’d wanted it for so long, he was desperate for this. But if Kenma were to say the word, he would stop in a heartbeat.

He really hoped that Kenma wouldn’t say no.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

Tetsurou kissed Kenma again, harder this time. Kenma reached up, his fingers clawing at the vulnerable skin of Tetsurou’s exposed neck. Arms snacked around his neck, pulling himself onto his knees and arching his neck back. Tetsurou couldn’t help but smile against his mouth. He leaned forward and ran his hands from Kenma’s shoulders, his chest, his stomach, down to his waist. Squeezed. The more that he kissed Kenma, the more of the taste he drank in, the more crazed he became. But he reigned himself back. His mouth still curled in a smile, he probed the outside of Kenma’s lips with the tip of his tongue. Teased Kenma’s wet, panting mouth, pushed his hands up under Kenma’s giant sweater. His hands must’ve been cold. When his palms pressed to the sides of Kenma’s torso, Kenma sighed audibly, desperately. In response, Tetsurou drove his tongue in further, navigating, suddenly thinking about how many words he’d heard roll from the tongue around which he now thirstily wrapped his own.

Kenma wrapped his arms more tightly around Tetsurou, pulled, moaned against his lips quietly. Tetsurou opened his eyes because he couldn’t bear to not look at Kenma’s face. Eyes closed, cheeks so red, eyelashes shaking and tears gone. Tetsurou worked his fingers up higher. He moved his kiss to the corner of Kenma’s lips, groaned when Kenma let out a soft, breathy whimper.

“A-ah...”

Kenma let his head fall forward, leaned his forearms on Tetsurou’s shoulders, and let Tetsurou pull his legs around his waist. Pressed the weight of his groin against Tetsurou’s, reached for the back of Tetsurou’s shirt, while Tetsurou’s tongue drew circles on Kenma’s neck. Kenma dug his hips down, pressed himself to Tetsurou’s chest, moaned into his red ear as the pleasure spread warm and white between their legs. Tetsurou pushed his hips up, drove his hands higher, higher, until Kenma raised his arms and Tetsurou tossed his sweater into the corner. Kenma Jr. and Kuroo Jr. both scurried over to it and curled up together.

“Mm, you’re so beautiful,” Tetsurou murmured against Kenma’s skin. He wrapped his arms around his bare body, let his fingers ride his pale skin like he were smoothing it out, painting it, desperate to kiss every inch. While Kenma’s legs, in their pink socks and curled toes, pressed down into the carpet. In the next moment, Tetsurou’s shirt was off, too, and Kenma’s nails drew blood from the skin of his back. Kenma’s hair was falling down against his skin, tickling him, getting in the way of his hard tongued kisses.

“K...Kuro...”

Kenma pressed, pressed, pressed down against Tetsurou’s rising crotch, until his back arched back and his hips swiveled and his face turned toward the ceiling. Tetsurou couldn’t quiet his moan, not when he felt the pressure and saw Kenma’s face like that. Upturned, eyes slightly open and mouth wide and hair everywhere. He was sweating—they both were. Exposed, beautifully pale and porcelain. Tetsurou let his lips hover just above the skin of Kenma’s neck, touched it lightly with his tongue. Put his palms in the arch of his back and let Kenma fall back slightly. As he did, Kenma maneuvered his hand until it was fiddling with the rim of Tetsurou’s pants, teasing, the skin-to-skin contact unbearably tantalizing. He unbuttoned them, unzipped them, and slowly—fuck it was slow—dug his hand into Tetsurou’s boxers.

“Fuck, Kenma—!”

He wrapped his fingers around Tetsurou’s semi-hard cock, moving the ring of his hand slowly down the shaft. Down, and then back up, pushing it toward his stomach. He rolled his wrist, moved, until Tetsurou was harder than a rock. And, from what he could tell when Kenma moaned and swiveled his hips again, so was Kenma. Tetsurou smiled as the sweat poured and the air became heavy with their breaths. And he forced himself to keep his drooping eyes open. At least for a little bit.

As Kenma moved his hand, rolling it over the head and gradually getting faster, Tetsurou watched him lick his lower lip. It made his body hot, made him groan and spin from the pleasure. When he blinked he saw white. He lifted his hand and put it to Kenma’s cheek, wiping the hairs away to see him more clearly. Kenma didn’t smile—his smiles were rare. But he leaned into Tetsurou’s palm and opened his lips and sighed.

Tetsurou used his other hand to move down to Kenma’s around his cock. He grabbed it, and without a word, moved it away.

“Kuro—ah!”

Tetsurou leaned forward, forcing Kenma down onto his back on the carpet. He settled himself between Kenma’s hips and kissed him, grabbed his hands, pushed them down to the ground. Kenma’s muffled groans vibrated against his lips, his hair spread out beneath his head, his mouth opened in welcome. He bent his legs and put the soles of his feet to Tetsurou’s calves, moving them up and down. But he pulled away, turned sideways, when Tetsurou breathed out and thrust his hips against him. His fingers squeezed Tetsurou’s.

“Kenma, do you,” he began, pausing to take a breath while he whispered in his ear. “Do you want to...?”

“Yes.” Kenma began to nod. He stretched his arms further out. “Let’s do it.”

Tetsurou laughed quietly. At the sound, Kenma opened his eyes. Blinked lethargically, let the tension out from his muscles.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, his voice hoarse. Tetsurou shook his head. “Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing, I just...” Tetsurou paused to kiss him. For as long as he could. “Your hair looks funny.”

“Stop it. Bedhead.”

“Pudding head.”

Tetsurou smiled. Then he propped himself up on his arms and sighed again.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

Kenma nodded while Tetsurou ran quickly back to his room, shaking off his boxers as he did. He reached into his nightstand for a condom and a bottle of lube, and then he ran back to where Kenma still lay in the exact same position. Tetsurou moved back in between his hips and buried his fingers in Kenma’s hair. Kissed his lips. Kissed them again, lifted Kenma’s thighs, dug his hips in deeper. Dug them in again, until he could hear Kenma’s sigh in his ear. He put his lips to Kenma’s chest, watched Kenma’s fingers grasp the blanket that was spread across the carpet, while he bit open the condom wrapper and by some miracle managed to slip it on. Just looking at Kenma spread out beneath him made him see stars. When the condom was securely on, he flipped open the lube bottle and spread it along his fingers.

“Ready?”

Kenma nodded.

Gently, Tetsurou pushed Kenma’s hips up higher. He began as slow as possible. One finger, circling the rim, while he continued kissing Kenma. His finger went in a little bit, circled, went in further. Kenma caught his breath and opened his mouth wider. He was tight, so Tetsurou was careful. He pushed his finger in the entire way, and then removed it halfway. Kenma squirmed, whimpered for a moment, and caught his breath again when Tetsurou pushed his finger back in. When he was loose (at least looser than before), he put the second finger in. This time, it was obviously painful. Kenma bit his lower lip and grasped the blanket more tightly, until his knuckles were white.

In an attempt to relax him, Tetsurou kissed him slowly. Danced with his tongue, moaned into him, moved with both fingers. Then he pulled them both out. Kenma let his breath out and began to pant, catch his breath, relax his muscles. Tetsurou tightened his grip on Kenma’s thighs, lifted them just a bit higher, kissed him again. Kenma’s eyes fluttered open. His hands went up to Tetsurou’s face, his fingers traced his lips. Tetsurou kissed his fingertips.

Kenma closed his eyes. Put his arms around his neck. So Tetsurou positioned his hips and put the head of his cock to his entrance. He saw Kenma start holding his breath. He went in slowly because he knew it was nothing like fingers, even with the lube. When he wasn’t even halfway in, Kenma gasped and banged his head back against the floor. Tetsurou paused, listened for a moment to Kenma’s ragged breath, and moved his hand down Kenma’s torso. Then he grabbed Kenma’s cock. If he could give him this pleasure, it might take away the pain. He pumped, hoping that his felt even a little bit as good as what Kenma’s hand had felt like, and pushed in deeper.

“God...”

He was almost all the way in, and Kenma’s face was completely red. Mouth wide open, eyes fluttering. He clung to Tetsurou’s neck desperately. When he was almost all in, he pulled out a bit, just enough for Kenma to let his breath out. Then he pushed back in, grit his teeth, pressed his thumb against the head of Kenma’s cock. After a few repetitions, Kenma had loosened up significantly more. He wasn’t so tense, but sweat covered his face and his back, his fingers digging into Tetsurou’s skin. He started to go in deeper, go in faster, and Kenma moaned desperately in Tetsurou’s ear. With every thrust, Kenma loosened up more, breathed out in a high whimper. Tetsurou watched the pain melt into pleasure—he wasn’t as inexperienced as he would have people think. He knew what he was doing. He angled himself differently, slid in and out, probing for Kenma’s sweet spot. Kenma pushed his hips down, grinded against him, wrapped his legs around him.

Eventually, it was there. Tetsurou slid down into the sweet spot, and Kenma cried out, falling back down against the carpet. Tetsurou put his lips, his tongue, to Kenma’s neck and pumped him, hit the spot again, again, while his own pleasure began to build. He groaned, gravelly, with each thrust, while Kenma let the cries of pleasure sit on his open lips.

“Kuro, I—”

He stole what words Kenma was about to say with a heavy kiss. He held that kiss as he thrust again, as they moaned into each other—as he stiffened, trembled, and they reached the final stage together. Crying each other’s names into their ears. Tetsurou rolled over onto his back, panting, Kenma doing the same beside him.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

“I didn’t realize it would be so good,” Kenma whispered.

“Haven’t you seen me?” Tetsurou scoffed.

“Kuro?”

“Hmm?”

“Would you stay with me tonight?”

“Of course.”

He sat up, exhausted, and got dressed. Then he helped Kenma back into his shorts and sweater, remembering that he’d been wearing his socks the entire time. Without bothering to brush their teeth, they curled up beneath the blankets of Kenma’s bed. For about an hour after they’d gotten into bed, Kenma was on his phone. Staring at the screen, the only source of light in the room, as Tetsurou held him and breathed against the back of his neck and braided his hair. Kenma Jr. and Kuroo Jr. joined them on the bed.

Tetsurou wasn’t actually sure if Kenma ended up falling asleep.

But when the morning came, and they woke up wrapped up in each other, they saw each other and realized.

Everything was different now.


	2. 2

**2**

**Kenma**

     Kenma did fall asleep that night, if only for a few hours. Curling up in Tetsurou’s arms helped him feel warm, comfortable, secure enough to let his eyes close. His breath and the heaving of his chest was like a lullaby. He had a beautiful dream.

* * *

 

     _I’m sitting on the edge of a sandbox. It’s chilly, even though I’m wearing a jacket, and there are grains of sand in my pants. I’m awfully uncomfortable. I’m staring down at the ground, watching a line of ants walk around my feet. They look like they have purpose, and that makes me jealous, because I have no idea what mine is. None at all. Even if I get up and walk, like they are, I won’t have anywhere to go—nowhere meaningful, at least. I don’t know where my feet would take me._

_I don’t have to wonder. My eyes are still glued to the ants when a hand reaches down and grabs mine, forcing my gaze up. There’s a boy smiling shamelessly down at me. His hair is very black and messy, his eyes kind of narrow and dark and colorless. His smile is crooked, like one side of his mouth is heavier than the other. I jump in surprise, blink, and he tugs on my hand. Not strong enough to pull me, but there is something in the touch of his fingers against my wrist, stronger than any physical force. I stand up. He laughs and starts to run, so I run with him. We leave the ants and the sandbox behind and run toward the ocean. I’m scared of the ocean, but he looks back and says, “It’s okay,” somehow smoothly even as he runs._

_“I’m scared of the ocean, too, but we can teach other how to swim.”_

* * *

  When Kenma finally opened his eyes, he was freezing and sad. He was alone in the bed, and even though the room was dark, he peered through the door to the room and saw the sunlight in the main hall. Groggy, slow, lightheaded, he reached for his phone. When he couldn’t find it, he flipped the covers of the bed up, heard the thud of his phone, and grabbed it from the floor. It was a little past noon. He let his phone fall from his fingers back to the ground, rubbed his eyes. His limbs felt heavy and when he did so much as turn onto his back, his body ached. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, but he pulled the blankets up and curled up anyway. His curtain of hair fell upon his face as he crushed it against the pillow and smelled nothing but Tetsurou. Vivid images, sensations, from the surreal night before rushed back to him. His breath became ragged, but he knew that Tetsurou was still home, so he muffled his voice against the pillow. Tears slid from his eyes.

     _That couldn’t have happened._

He smelled a strand of his own hair. That smelled like Tetsurou, too.

     After he’d been laying there for long enough that he felt restless, Kenma put his feet against the carpet and spread his arms out. Almost immediately, Kuroo Jr. and Kenma Jr. began rubbing against his legs, their little bodies vibrating with their purrs. Still wiping tears, Kenma stroked their backs. He didn’t bother opening the blinds. He didn’t want any more sunlight. His appointment wasn’t until two, so he had time to at least shower. In his big sweater (now covered in sweat), he shuffled out of his room and made his way to the bathroom. He moved as quickly as possible, not wanting to interact with Tetsurou for even a moment. He couldn’t walk properly.

     The shower was a strange one. He cleaned his ass, perhaps by instinct, more thoroughly. But the water running over his fragile limbs didn’t feel cleansing, but almost like it was making him dirtier. His hair felt too long slapping against his spine. Everything was uncomfortable. He finished as quickly as he could and hurried back to his room to get dressed. He put on his favorite pair of high-waisted denim shorts, with the flowery pockets, over a pair of black tights. He tucked a large white t-shirt into it and added a black belt. Then he moved to the tiny, dirty mirror to do his hair. He had to brush through it with a comb first, spray it with leave-in conditioner, then spend a good ten minutes blow-drying it to perfection. When it was soft and straight, he gathered it into a topknot, letting thick strands frame his face. He added a little flower pin, just behind his ear. As a final touch, he put on a thin layer of mascara and a splash of pink lip-gloss.

There were a lot of things Kenma didn’t care about in his life. For some reason or another (even he couldn’t understand it), his appearance was one of the few things he enjoyed caring about. He didn’t care much for social interactions or school or work or anything, really. Maybe it was because his appearance, his wardrobe, his make-up, were the only things in his life that he could control.

     _Well, I guess I can add Kuro to that list,_ he thought cynically.

     By the time he was done, it was around one. He supposed it was about time to see Tetsurou, though avoidance was one of Kenma’s strong suits. He dragged himself out into the main living room, with the couch and the kitchen and the television and the tree for their cats. Tetsurou was there, but he was silent. He was on his back, lying on the couch, legs crossed, head leaning against the armrest. He had big red headphones over his ears, was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. He must have showered, because his hair was still slightly wet, but it looked the same as it did every day. Messy, poking out and sweeping in every direction. Kenma had watched him for years try gel after gel, product after product, in an attempt to tame it. After a while he’d just given up, despite Kenma’s protests. He was on his phone, bobbing his head to music that Kenma couldn’t hear, texting someone. Kenma could see his tattoos peeking out from his t-shirt, could see the piercing in his eyebrow shimmer in the broken sunlight.

     The longer he watched Tetsurou, oblivious to his gaze, the further Kenma’s stomach sank. It was the first time he really felt like he didn’t want to be around him. He’d made a mistake, one that would be terribly difficult to fix.

     But, no, that wasn’t fair—there had to be a reason that Kenma felt so relieved seeing Tetsurou spread out like that. His fingers typing away, nimble, at the keyboard on his phone. Foot in the air, bobbing to the beat. Hair falling over his eyes, small smile on the same lips that had kissed him so deeply. The laugh that escaped him after reading a funny message. Kenma wanted Tetsurou to stay like that forever because, despite the sense of remorse and discomfort, it felt so natural. He could’ve gazed at him forever.

     After a few moments, Tetsurou must have felt Kenma watching him. He glanced over, smiled more broadly, and lowered his headphones to his neck.

     “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said jovially.

     _Does he feel it, too?_ Kenma wondered. _This awful—awful?—change? Everything is different. I wonder if he feels it._

“Morning.”

     “You haven’t slept that long in ages. Feel refreshed?”

     Kenma shrugged. He didn’t feel refreshed at all. Just sluggish.

     “Well, anyway, it’s a little late for breakfast, but I can make a quick lunch.”

     “Okay,” Kenma said. He sat down in one of the armchairs and grabbed his 3DS from the coffee table. He was in the middle of _A Link Between Worlds_. He wanted to beat it soon.

     “Sandwich all right?”

     Kenma nodded, knowing that Tetsurou was watching. But he didn’t expect Tetsurou to walk up to him. He was fighting the approaching enemies, but looked up when Tetsurou walked over.

     “Oh, hold on, your pin is crooked.”

     Tetsurou reached down to fix Kenma’s flower pin. And, like a reflex, Kenma flinched back, gripping the 3DS more tightly as the enemies slaughtered him. Tetsurou blinked, his hand frozen in the air, but forced a quivering smile to his lips and put his hand back into his pocket.

     “Sorry, Kenma,” he said softly.

     Then he went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. Kenma, his eyes on Tetsurou’s broad, beautiful back, was afraid that he would start crying again. So he went back to his game and tried to forget (knowing that he never really would) that he had asked his best friend to fuck him senseless last night.

* * *

     The car ride to the therapist’s office was silent and awkward. Tetsurou had his window down, his elbow hanging out, other hand sitting smoothly on the steering wheel. He was wearing sunglasses, hadn’t bothered doing anything with his hair. Kenma had his feet up on the dash in the passenger seat, still on his 3DS, window up, chewing bubblegum, annoyed from the glare of the sun on his screen. Tetsurou had his phone connected via Bluetooth and was playing the kind of music Kenma couldn’t be bothered to listen to. There were a lot of guitar solos and the guy singing sounded like he’d smoked hundreds of cigarettes. Tetsurou mouthed the words.

     At a red light, Tetsurou finally spoke.

     “So, uh,” he began. He sounded uncharacteristically uncertain. “How are you feeling?”

     Kenma shrugged and kept playing. He didn’t want to admit to Tetsurou that he felt terrible and frightened because of what happened last night. He felt dirty, he felt like he’d ruined everything, he felt like the amazing relationship he’d had with Tetsurou was gone.

     “Are you gonna tell your therapist?”

     “Tell him what?”

     “You know,” Tetsurou sighed, “about last night?”

     “No. I don’t think so,” Kenma said quietly. He blew a bubble with his gum and let it pop against his lips.

     In all honesty, he’d been considering it. Because now he was confused. As hard as they would try to set things back on course, they’d felt each other too deeply. Kenma knew the taste of him, the sensations of his clammy, sweet skin, the texture of his tongue and the rise and fall of his moans. He knew Tetsurou’s kisses now. He knew the tenderness with which he touched Kenma. He had the marks of his fingertips engraved in his back. There was no way to go back, not now. Not when he closed his eyes, or licked his lips and felt Tetsurou. Not now that he was destined to think about nothing but Tetsurou when he slept, when he felt alone, when he touched himself.

     “All right. Whatever makes you comfortable,” Tetsurou said. They pulled into the parking lot and he turned to face Kenma. His smile was gone. “Guess I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

     “Okay. Thanks.” Kenma closed his 3DS and kicked the car door open, leaving it on the seat. The bubblegum had long ago lost its flavor, but he kept chewing it anyway.

     “See you, Kenma.”

     Kenma waved his hand, tried to smile, but couldn’t. Then he closed the car door and walked inside before Tetsurou’s car had left the parking lot. Kenma ended up not telling his therapist about what had happened, even though he could tell that something was wrong. Thankfully, he wasn’t the type of person to push.

     An hour later, Kenma walked out of the building. Tetsurou was waiting there, just like he was every week, leaning against his car and twirling his keys. His sunglasses pushed up to his head. He waved to Kenma. Kenma waved back and walked over. He hoped that nobody could notice the strange way that he was walking. He was sure that Tetsurou could notice. Tetsurou handed him another piece of bubblegum, opened the door for him, then got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

     “Wanna stop for ice cream or something?”

     Kenma blew another bubble.

     “Sure. If you want ice cream, I’ll come.”

     Tetsurou opened his mouth, as if about to say something, but he must have thought better of it. He just shrugged. He drove for a few more minutes and Kenma got in some more 3DS, and then they stopped at the little ice cream parlor by the wharf. It smelled like sugar and the ocean, and the sun was still bright. Kenma had to squint when he got out of the car, and this time he brought his 3DS with him. He and Tetsurou walked up to the small booth, where the pretty silver-haired kid was scooping the ice cream. Kenma had seen him here before. He stood behind Tetsurou, playing on his 3DS, shuffling from one bedazzled foot to the other. He had to admit that, as annoying as the sunlight was, it felt nice and warm on his pale skin.

     “One medium bowl, scoop of lemon and scoop of strawberry for me,” Tetsurou said. “And a cake cone with soft serve vanilla and rainbow sprinkles for him.”

     “Coming right up!”

     “I got this one,” Tetsurou smiled, pulling his wallet out.

     Kenma blinked at him, tried to smile back, and failed again. He turned back down to the screen of his 3DS. If he had been playing a game that was less bright and colorful, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything. When they had their ice cream, Kenma put his 3DS away and replaced it with his phone. Without really looking where he was going, he just followed Tetsurou, walking slowly. Followed, step after step, until Tetsurou decided on a wooden bench overlooking the ocean. He sat down, stretched his arms out, then crossed his legs and dug into his ice cream with a spoon. Kenma sat cross-legged beside him. He licked the sprinkles from his ice cream cone.

     “Good session?” Tetsurou asked.

     “Normal,” Kenma said. He found a pidgey, so he caught it while he ate. He wanted Tetsurou to keep talking, but he didn’t want to say anything. Knowing Tetsurou, he would probably start talking anyway. And, of course, Kenma was right.

     “Hey, I’ve been thinking. You know, since we...I mean, since last night.”

     Kenma looked out at the ocean. He breathed it in. It went well with the taste of rainbow sprinkles.

     “You haven’t said anything about it...I just, uh, well...”

     Tetsurou wasn’t the type of person to stumble over his words. He was always so sure of himself. His uncertainty was enough to make Kenma’s stomach churn. He avoided looking at Tetsurou and just focused on the ocean, the colors of his ice cream cone, his phone screen. Anything but Tetsurou. Kenma heard him take a deep breath.

     “I’m really sorry, Kenma.”

     The apology made Kenma look over. Tetsurou was staring at him with a sad, guilty smile on his crooked lips. Kenma could see the gentleness in his eyes, even behind the dark sunglasses.

     “You’re...sorry?”

     “Yeah. I’m sorry. Listen, neither of us is stupid. But we couldn’t have predicted—you know—what happened. You’re my best friend, and I don’t want that to change. I don’t want things to be weird. I know it’s hard, but maybe we could go back to the way things were?” he ventured. Kenma blinked.

     _So I wasn’t the only one thinking that._

_What a relief._

“Yeah. That’s a good idea,” Kenma sighed. He licked his ice cream, and this time, didn’t flinch away when Tetsurou reached up to wipe it from the corner of his glossed lips with a napkin. “Okay.”

     “Sweet.”

     Kenma was finally able to smile back, even if it was slight. They both heaved a collective sigh, and turned back to the ocean.

     _But if it’s such a relief..._

_Why do I feel so fucking sad?_   

* * *

      Tetsurou tried to convince Kenma to come down to the bar. One of his best friends was coming, he said—a loud, energetic guy named Koutarou Bokuto that Kenma had met before—and it would do Kenma good to come down and spend some time with them. But he claimed that he didn’t have the energy, and that he needed to finish his game. He had a deadline to meet, after all. So Tetsurou shrugged his shoulders, put on his bartending suit, and moved to the door.

     “If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” he called with a wave of his hand. “Try to get some sleep, all right?”

     “Okay, Mom.”

     “Brat.” With a mocking expression, Tetsurou laughed, and then left. Kenma was, yet again, alone. It was never Tetsurou’s fault. He was always there with Kenma when he could be. But it was inevitable that they be separated, that Kenma be alone, a lot of the time. Except now, there was a different anxiety in waiting for Tetsurou to come back.

     Kenma Jr. and Kuroo Jr. curled up on either side of Kenma when he turned off all the lights and sat down, back in his oversized sweater and lace shorts, to keep working on his game. They were both purring. After about an hour, right when he was starting to feel thirsty, Tetsurou popped back in with a bottle of Coke. He didn’t say anything. He just scurried into the room, put the bottle (already opened) next to Kenma, and then ran back down to the bar before they noticed he was gone. Kenma continued coding, pausing every few moments to take a sip of his drink and calm himself down by stroking the cats. Usually he didn’t cry while he coded, but tonight, he cried. He was thinking about Tetsurou. He was thinking about last night, how nice it had felt to kiss him. He was thinking about the feeling of Tetsurou inside him, being as close as they could possibly be, whispering in each other’s ears.

     He was thinking about how desperately he wanted to do it again.

     He was thinking about how terrible of an idea that was, because they’d already ruined everything. Even if they said things would go back to normal, it would be nothing but a façade. They could never go back. And Tetsurou had still had the courage to apologize and say, I don’t want things to be weird.

     As he cried, Kenma coded a new character into his game. A little boy with black hair who liked the ocean. Kenma decided to name him Shiroo. He would be the main character’s best friend. The cats seemed to like it.

     _“Maybe we could go back to the way things were?”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Listen, neither of us is stupid...”_  

     Kenma chuckled to himself. That was the funniest thing Tetsurou had said, because it was wrong. Tetsurou...Tetsurou had always been smart. Much smarter than Kenma. That’s why he’d helped Kenma study in high school, and why he’d always been a better friend to Kenma than Kenma had been to him.

     _Sorry, Kuro, but you’re wrong._

_I am stupid._

He made sure to go to bed, curling up with the cats, so that he could pretend to be asleep before Tetsurou came back. He didn’t want to talk to him, because he knew that it would be a repeat of the night before.

     Except tonight, Tetsurou would say no, and Kenma wouldn’t have been able to bear that.

     So instead, he touched himself before he went to bed, thinking about Tetsurou, exhausting himself. Crying.

     _You’ll say no if I ask again, right?_

_Asking would be stupid, right?_

_You’re not stupid, Kuro._

_You won’t let me be stupid again._

_You’ll just say no._

_So I won’t ask anymore._

_You don’t have to kiss me again._

_I won’t ask._

He didn’t fall asleep that night. Not even for a single second. 


	3. 3

**3**

**Kuroo**

     Tetsurou considered actually pouring himself a drink, but ultimately decided against it. Instead, he tried to focus all of his concentration, every last fucking bit of it, on Koutarou. Who was at the moment downing his third cocktail. It was hard to tell just when he was tipsy, drunk, or plain sober, due to his already loud nature and incessant smile. Tetsurou, who'd been friends with Koutarou for a few years now and owned the bar, could pretty much tell. Koutarou was still on the verge.

     “Kuroo!”

     “What's up?”

     “Do you dare me to drink every single cocktail on the menu?”

     “You wouldn't.”

     Koutarou raised his eyebrows.

     “Wouldn’t I?”

     “Do you have,” Tetsurou began quietly, leaning across the counter, “enough money for every single cocktail?”

     “Aw, shit.”

     Tetsurou laughed as he mixed another one. He made deals for Koutarou, because they were close. It was also hilarious when Koutarou was shitfaced. He was hilarious all the time, really. He brought out the inner child in Tetsurou, made him want to do stupid things just for the hell of it. Both of them brought out the good in each other.

     “Don’t give him anymore. He’s annoying enough as it is.”

     As Tetsurou handed the drink to Koutarou, they turned to face the tall, lanky kid who was approaching the counter. He was one of Tetsurou’s employees, since he couldn’t run the entire place himself. His name was Kei Tsukishima; he was a sarcastic, ill-tempered young man with a penchant for condescension and putting other people down. Unbelievably intelligent, and he liked to rub it in people’s faces. Tetsurou had liked him as soon as he’d interviewed him for the job, much to Kei’s dismay—even more annoying to the relatively withdrawn (unless he was insulting someone) Kei, Koutarou had taken a special interest in him.

     “Like you could hold down _half_ the amount of alcohol that I can, Tsukki,” Koutarou taunted.

     “Don’t call me that.”

     “Tsukki.”

     “Stop it.”

     “Tsukki. Kuroo, you try it.”

     “Don’t you dare.”

     “Tsukkiiiiiiii,” Tetsurou chimed in, drawing his voice out until he saw Kei cringe.

     “You stupid old men should just go fuck yourselves,” he grumbled, grabbing a tray of drinks and walking away.

     “Hey. We’re not that old,” Koutarou grumbled.

     “Yeah we are. Ancient,” Tetsurou shrugged. “It just means we’re wise.”

     “Oh. Wise. Yeah, I like that. We’re wise as fuck.”

     “Not to mention sexy.”

     “Holy shit, we are, aren’t we?” Koutarou cried. “Speaking of which, guess who got a super hot date.” He took his thumbs and pressed them to his chest. “ _This_ guy.”

     “Look at you go, you smooth son of a bitch.”

     A woman at the bar asked for a Long Island. He smiled at her, a smile that he’d once heard described as ‘ambiguous,’ and made the drink. She took it with a smooth thank-you and a generous tip.

     “Bet you’ve got no problem with the ladies. Or the men. Or anyone, really,” Koutarou pointed out. Tetsurou just kept smiling. He glanced back at the woman. She was sitting next to another woman, and they were speaking in hushed tones. As if they were telling secrets they wanted everyone to be curious about.

     After Tetsurou had dropped out of college and taken over, the Black Cat had become a haven for members of the queer community, a safe place known throughout the city. Here, people loved in the beautiful, diverse ways that they knew how, making it bright and colorful and romantic. People wore what they wanted, said what they wanted, did what they wanted (and who they wanted), loved who they wanted. It was one of the reasons the Black Cat had become even more successful since Tetsurou had become its owner. It was a place where everyone could strip down to their very bones, reveal the parts of themselves that they felt forced to hide when they were outside of the sanctity of this place. Tetsurou liked seeing those parts in people.

     “What can I say? I am who I am,” he said to Koutarou.

     “So?” he insisted.

     “So, what?”

     “Anyone currently on the radar, hotshot?”

     “Right now?”

     It was such an easy question to answer. It wasn’t like Koutarou didn’t know the answer anyway. If Tetsurou wanted someone on the radar, there was someone on the radar. He was hardly the type of person to be fond of loneliness, and he had no problems remedying such situations. Especially as the bartender of a place like Black Cat. Especially with a smile as ‘ambiguous’ as his. It drew people in.

     The question had never bothered him before this moment. This specific moment, when it made his head spin and his heart shrivel up, hollow, colorless. But he swallowed his discomfort and made it look like a rainbow, so that when he opened his mouth to reply, lie to his best friend’s face, it would at least look okay.

     “No. Not now,” he said. The words were bland on his tongue. It was at once both a lie and the truth, a lament, a means of hiding the fact that the one person he couldn’t have was tearing him apart from the inside. Drinking away his color.

     “Seriously?”

     Tetsurou shrugged the question off, but Koutarou’s attention span was small, so he let the subject change. He rambled about an episode of _My Strange Addiction_ he’d seen.

     “There was this woman addicted to snorting baby powder, so I tried it, and I sneezed like crazy and got a really, really bad headache.”

     “You didn’t get a high?”

     “Nope, not even a little bit.”

     “You should try something more potent,” Kei interjected, handing money for Tetsurou to put in the register. “Like salt.”

     “Ooh! Good idea, Tsukki.”

     Before Tetsurou could go grab a packet of salt, chuckling to himself, the door opened and two unfamiliar men walked in.

     “Welcome to the Black Cat,” he called. He leaned across the counter and smiled. “Haven’t seen you two around.”

     “That’s cuz we don’t usually come into places like this,” one of the men said. Tetsurou narrowed his eyes. They were stumbling over each other, laughing, snorting, already disruptive to the other customers. They were clearly very drunk.

     “What, places with some decency?” Kei scoffed.

     “Shut up, faggot!” One of the men pointed his finger at Kei, who just blinked. Genuinely surprised that someone had said that to him, let alone in a place like the Black Cat. Tetsurou knew these types—homophobic people who felt that it was a good idea to invade the places they knew they weren’t welcome. Where they knew there were people unlike themselves, people they could make feel uncomfortable in their safe haven.

     They were people that Tetsurou despised.

     “Oi! If you’re gonna make a scene, get out,” he called.

     “We’ll go where we want! If we wanna bother a bunch of homos and trannies, we fucking will,” one man said.

     “Like hell you will. Get the fuck out, before I run my fist through that dirty mouth of yours,” Tetsurou hissed. Koutarou stood up. A few other people stood among the hushed murmurs, and the two intruders looked around anxiously.

     “Whatever. Like we wanna be around the likes of you anyway.”

     They turned and they left. Everyone heaved a collective sigh.

     “The fuck was up with them?” Koutarou grumbled.

     “You get them every once in a while. Like to come in and cause trouble because they have nothing better to do,” Kei shrugged. “I almost feel bad for them.”

     “I don’t.” Tetsurou leaned back against the wall and started mixing another drink. And in that strange moment, when he blinked, he imagined Kenma upstairs. He was glad he hadn’t been down here to see that. Kenma was sensitive.

     At least, Tetsurou thought he was.

     But recently, he felt like he hardly knew Kenma at all.

     He knew that Kenma like to lie in bed, wrapped in the covers, and make himself small. He knew that Kenma’s favorite food was apple pie. He knew that Kenma’s favorite animal was a cat, just like Tetsurou, and he had even once said that he trusted Tetsurou because he reminded him of a cat. He knew that Kenma was shy, that he hated alcohol, that he was insecure about how skinny he was, that he loved Marina and the Diamonds and that after he got his paycheck he had impulsive shopping problems. It was easy to shop online, he said. It didn’t require him to move. He knew that Kenma was addicted to video games, because they helped him escape reality and discover new worlds in different bodies.

     He wondered if Kenma knew little things about him, too. His favorite movies, his favorite foods, his birthmarks and his weird habits.

     At the end of the night, after Koutarou had been shipped home in a taxi, Kei helped Tetsurou clean up.

     “How often do you see guys like that?” Kei asked as he swept the floors.

     “You mean the assholes from earlier? Not that often. I mean, the whole vibe of the bar is relatively new. Only since I started running it. But people tend to know their place.”

     “Did you always plan on running it? After your dad retired, or whatever?”

     “No.” Tetsurou smiled. He wiped the counter. Kei blinked at him, stoic no matter the emotions he felt. “I wanted to be a chemist.”

     “A chemist? You? You’re joking.”

     “As serious as they come,” Tetsurou laughed. “I was studying it at university. But I dropped out to take over the place.”

     “Why the hell would you do that? You must’ve been good at it if you liked it enough to go to university for it,” Kei said. Tetsurou shrugged.

     “There were more important things I had to think about. Besides, I like it. And I’m good at mixing the drinks.”

     “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

     After Kei was gone, Tetsurou took a deep breath. And he went upstairs, to the only reason he’d come back here in the first place. Where that reason was pretending to be asleep, curled up with the cats.

* * *

     When Kenma walked out of his room, late the next morning, Tetsurou was distracted. He had spoons lined up at the kitchen table and was picking each one up, fitting it against his nose, his chin, his cheeks, and then trying to keep them there. He’d been trying for fifteen minutes now. He still hadn’t managed even one.

     “Kuro...what are you doing?” Kenma asked, shuffling over. Kenma Jr. was at his heels—Kuroo Jr. had long ago fallen asleep at Tetsurou’s feet. Kenma was dressed as usual. His sweater, his shorts, his socks. He’d tied his hair up into a messy bun and the bags under his eyes were dark and heavy.

     “Oh, morning,” Tetsurou said with a smile. “How’d you sleep?”

     “Not at all,” Kenma said. He pointed to the spoons. “What’s with the spoons?”

     “Well, Bokuto sent me a picture of himself balancing four spoons on his face. Which means I have to balance five, but I can’t even get one.”

     Kenma blinked. Once, twice, three times, before he shook his head lightly and moved to the fridge. He opened it and began to rummage, while Tetsurou tried again with the spoons. But his eyes were on Kenma now. His shoulders hunched, strands of hair sneaking out of his hair-tie, large sleeves of his sweater (even in summer) covering his hands and smooth legs shaking slightly. He liked to curl his toes up, and Tetsurou could see it through the socks. Now that the fridge was open, Kenma Jr. began rubbing against Kenma’s legs, and then meowed. Begging for food. Tetsurou wished that Kenma had been able to sleep. Sleep made him look brighter, not so sad and small.

     “We’re out of milk,” he said softly, taking out the empty carton. “Why would you put an empty milk carton back in the fridge?”

     “Woops. Sorry,” Tetsurou shrugged. Kenma looked at him for a few moments, then put the empty carton back, never breaking eye contact. Instead, he grabbed the half-sandwich that he never finished yesterday and sat at the table picking at it.

     “How’s the game coming?” Tetsurou asked.

     “It’s fine. I’ll make the deadline, no problem.”

     “That’s good to hear.”

     “Yeah.”

     Tetsurou and Kenma had never had awkward silences before. (Which wasn’t to say that they never sat in silence together. They did that a lot—it was just never awkward.) But this silence was so awkward that if they’d reached their fingers out, they would’ve felt it rubbing against their nails. Everything was heavy. Tetsurou’s gaze fell to the chips, the scratches, the stains on the table, and he let the spoons fall. His phone buzzed, so he scrolled through his messages absentmindedly. Even if he wasn’t looking at Kenma, he was so aware of his presence, more than he’d ever been before. He could hear his breaths, his soft chews, his nails scraping the table, his swallows.

     At one point, Tetsurou glanced up. Kenma was eating. Just eating. There was a glassy, vacant look in his eyes. He swallowed, zoning out, somehow unaware of Tetsurou’s eyes on his face. After a few seconds, he noticed a piece of lettuce stuck to his thumb. He brought it to his lips, licked it off, kept his thumb there a bit longer, and then took another bite of his sandwich.

     In that moment, something strange happened. Tetsurou felt heat, starting deep in his stomach, spreading through his body mercilessly. His eyes were watery and his skin tingled. He could see every detail of Kenma’s tongue as it pressed to his thumb. He thought of how Kenma’s tongue tasted. He wanted it to stay there a bit longer, but it was gone too fast, and Tetsurou was left with nothing but thoughts of how desperately he wanted Kenma’s tongue pressed to _his_ skin.

     _Fuck._  

     Blushing, hot, overwhelmed, Tetsurou ripped his eyes away.

     When Kenma was finished, he washed his plate and put it on the drying rack. Then he walked to the couch and he sat down, bringing his legs up, and grabbed his 3DS. Tetsurou was hungry, too, but he didn’t want to get up and make himself anything. He lacked the energy at that particular moment. Which was strange.

     They sat in silence for a bit longer. Then, oddly enough, Kenma was the one to break the silence.

     “Kuro, I have a favor to ask.”

     “Hmm? What’s up?” Tetsurou’s head came up like a dog whose owner just walked through the door, and he was crushingly conscious of it. Kenma was still looking at the 3DS screen.

     “Could you brush and braid my hair? You’re way better at it than me.”

     “Oh. Yeah, sure. Are you going somewhere?”

     “No. It’s just bothering me.”

     “Okay.”

     It wasn’t an odd request. In fact, it was a rather common one. Kenma often turned to Tetsurou when it came to his hair because at this point, Tetsurou had become an expert at dealing with it. And yet, he was surprised when Kenma asked. He wouldn’t have been surprised a few days ago—but now that Kenma had also, at one point, asked Tetsurou to fuck him, it sounded a bit different.

     Tetsurou quickly went into the bathroom to grab Kenma’s black hairbrush. On the couch, Kenma had already positioned himself, so that his feet were pressed against the armrest and his shoulder was leaning against the back of the couch. Tetsurou sat behind him, legs crossed. His hair was still in the messy bun. So Tetsurou reached up and gently, so that he wouldn’t hurt Kenma, pulled the hair-tie out, guiding the tangled strands of hair down to Kenma’s back, covering his pale neck. Then, while Kenma kept playing, he began to comb through it. He would put the clumps of hair in the palm of his hand and run the brush through, slowly, thoroughly, taking care of every tangle. The backs of his fingers hovered above Kenma’s neck, moved along it, until he found himself driven nearly mad by the nearness of his skin.

     “Two braids or one?” he murmured.

     “One.”

     He brushed, brushed, brushed, until he could easily run his fingers through Kenma’s blond strands. His back barely moved with his quiet, small breaths, and from his hunched shoulders, the ridges of his spine poked out just slightly. Tetsurou remembered what it had been like to run his hands along them, counting the ridges, dipping through them like mountains and valleys that he mapped on his raw fingertips.

     He split Kenma’s hair into three strands. He put the two on either side over Kenma’s shoulders, smoothed them out, even though they didn’t really need smoothing. Then he began to braid. One strand over the other, pause, grab the other, bring that one over the one in the middle. A rhythmic, robotic motion that he’d grown used to—when Kenma had first asked him, and he’d totally screwed it up, he’d taken it upon himself to watch YouTube videos dedicated to the art of braiding so that the next time, he’d be able to give Kenma a real braid. Now it was natural. As he worked, strand after strand, tightening, he brought his face closer. Even he wasn’t really aware of it. Suddenly, his forehead was nearly touching the back of Kenma’s head. No doubt, Kenma could feel his breaths. His fingers moved more slowly, his breathing hollowed, caught in his dry throat. He was dreaming now, alone but together with Kenma in this world of daydreams and pretty braids and licking lettuce off thumbs.

     Any understanding of consequences, any impulse control, slipped away, just like they had when he’d first kissed Kenma.

     He moved the half-finished braid over Kenma’s shoulder so that he could see clearly the skin of his neck. It was bare, vulnerable, exposed, so fucking beautiful. Kenma caught his breath. Tetsurou could hear it. Fingers still entwined in Kenma’s hair, Tetsurou brought his face closer, closer, until his lips were right there. Just above Kenma’s skin. When he breathed in, there were sunflowers. Strawberries. Apple pie. Sadness and fear and cat hair.

     His lips reached. He kissed that spot, in the middle of Kenma’s neck. Pressed his lips against it, and without thinking, said his name.

     “Kenma...”

     He kissed it again. Again. Again. Breathing ragged now against Kenma’s skin. Kenma’s back hunched a bit more, his toes curled, he sighed and there was an earthquake.

     But when he heard Kenma’s voice, he came to his senses.

     “Kuro.”

     He pulled away quickly, jarringly, scaring even himself with this brutal rush into reality.

     “Shit, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he stumbled, burying his face in his hands.

     “It’s all right. Can you finish braiding my hair, please? I can’t finish it on my own.”

     “Of course.”

     He kept his distance when he grabbed Kenma’s hair again and continued braiding. Until it was tight, neat, and he tied it at the end. Finally, he pulled against the strands, to give it a more textured, thicker appearance.

     “Thanks, Kuro.”

     “Any time.”

     He stood from the couch, his face red, and he went to his room under the ruse of having a phone call to make. Doing his best to avoid Kenma’s eyes, because he wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing the look of betrayal, sadness, emptiness, on Kenma’s face. Not now.

     _Fuck._  


	4. 4

**4**

**Kenma**

        Kenma wished that Tetsurou had kept going. He wished that he’d kissed him harder, let his tongue run its course, slipped his fingers beneath his sweater and touched his bare skin. Now, sitting alone on the couch, the back of Kenma’s neck was cold and empty. He reached back and brushed his fingers against it. Right at the spot where Tetsurou had let his lips fall. Kenma closed his eyes. He tried to imagine that those lips were back there again. Then he imagined them on his shoulder, while the sweater slipped off. On his collar while he arched his neck back and tried to guess what pictures his tongue was painting.

        Kenma could no longer deny (at least to himself) that he wanted Tetsurou Kuroo so desperately that it made him see stars. He didn’t know why, he couldn’t determine when it had happened, and there was really nothing he could do about it. Tetsurou had made himself clear.

        _But had he?_

They’d been friends for a while, Kenma reasoned. He knew Tetsurou almost better than he knew himself. And as he sat and thought about the kisses on his neck, and the way Tetsurou had so tenderly combed through his hair, the explanation hit him. There were very few things Tetsurou cared about more than Kenma—so if Kenma wanted something, Tetsurou would do everything in his power to get it for him.

        That’s all that the sex meant. All that the kiss meant.

        Kenma knew that Tetsurou wasn’t actually making a phone call, so if he started crying, Tetsurou would hear. He swallowed it back. He curled up on the couch and buried his head in the cushions, vaguely aware of the cats jumping up to join him after finding their meows at Tetsurou’s door fruitless. He grabbed one of the pillows and hugged it to his chest, forced himself to take deep, too-long breaths to shoo the tears and the sobs away. It felt so nice when Tetsurou was touching him. Was it so bad to want to feel nice like that all the time? Was that so wrong, so wrong that Tetsurou had to apologize and hide his boners and pretend to have fake conversations with fake people just to get out of the same room?

        Somehow, by a miracle from a god who must have felt bad for putting Kenma through the torture of wanting to be touched and touched and touched by his best friend, he fell asleep. There, on the couch, pillow hugged against his chest and imagining Tetsurou’s arms around him. But this god wasn’t so merciful—Kenma dreamt of nothing but Tetsurou.

 

* * *

 

        Kenma is on the beach. He loves the beach. He’s always loved the beach. It’s almost a fantastical land to him, a place he can only travel to in times of magic and luck and people who pity him. He loves the sand, because it’s golden, and he hopes that in some angles of light his hair can look like that. Hiding the dirty black beneath. He loves the water, too, although he hates swimming; just looking at it is enough. Eyes scanning the soft, smooth waves as they crawl toward him, only to retreat back to infinity. He wishes the feeling of water on his skin weren’t so ugly, made his skin shiver the way that it does. Otherwise he would live in those waves with the fish, so unaware of the air above the surface. He loves the smell, too. Whatever sunlight smells like—whatever sunburns and freckles and straw hats smell like—that is the beach. Kenma has always hated that he sunburns so easily.

        He is lying on his back. Closing his eyes, though the sunlight pierces through his eyelids and makes the darkness there bright. Bright darkness, what a funny thought, a contradictory picture. His lips curl up into a smile. He realizes, the sand massaging his skin, that he is completely naked. Not even a swimsuit, not even his favorite hat, not even a drop of sunscreen. He is as he is, offering his delicate skin to the sun in its shriveling nakedness.

        Even though the beach is quiet, Kenma knows that he’s not alone. There is someone next to him. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know who it is. He can just feel the heat, hear the familiar music of the breaths of that person. So close that they are nearly touching, but not quite. Kenma can even imagine the expression on that person’s face.

        Tetsurou must be smiling. He almost always is. A crooked, heavy-on-one-side smile, lips curling over slightly crooked, sharp white teeth whose bites feel like the goosebumps you get when you listen to really, really good music. His eyelids are drooping, but he is wide-awake. Frighteningly awake. He looks like he has some kind of plan. Like the next moment is one that he’s been waiting for his entire life—why does he always look like that? Like he’s a god, a god who has been able to scheme everything so perfectly with the grace of Aphrodite emerging from the ocean? Maybe he really has. He planned for Kenma to be here beside him, unable to open his eyes (even if he wanted to) beneath the heavy fingers of the sun pressing him into the sand.

        Neither of them says anything. They don’t need to. Kenma has never needed to. Tetsurou can hear what he wants to say without him needing to actually say anything. Tetsurou spoils Kenma, spoils his voice. He lets him be silent when the rest of the world says, Speak, and Kenma has always been thankful for that.

        Tetsurou reaches his arm out, so much tanner than Kenma’s, and drapes it across Kenma’s chest. Kenma sighs under the sudden pressure, weighing down against his body, warm and cold and wet and dry all at once. Tetsurou’s fingers begin to move, circling around his shoulder, hovering one moment only to dig deep and hard the next. Leaving his mark on Kenma, so that one day when Kenma opens his eyes he can see them for himself and know that Tetsurou really was here. His fingers feel like satin.

        He moves his hand to the center of Kenma’s chest. He traces the lines of his muscles, not so defined, so that he can define them himself. This is where your collarbone is, isn’t it, Kenma? And here, this is your left pectoral. Your heart is in there somewhere. Right? And down here—fingers trickling like drops of water from his neck—down here are your abs. One, two, three...do a sit up for me. No? Don’t worry. You must be tired. Don’t move a single one of these muscles.

        As his hands, his fingers continue mapping out Kenma’s body, Tetsurou moves closer in the sand. He puts his mouth to Kenma’s shoulder. His lips are open. His breaths push into Kenma’s skin, move down through the muscle and the bone and become a part of his bloodstream. Kenma can feel those breaths paralyzing him from the inside out. Tetsurou kisses his shoulder, and then begins to paint with his tongue. Landscapes. A map of the world. Here, Japan, on your shoulder. Across the Pacific is America, over here at the base of your neck. China big and broad lining your jaw, see how my tongue can trace every dip of its borders and every rise of its mountains. Kenma becomes lost, not knowing which body part is where and which country is which, in the pleasure of Tetsurou’s tongue. Moving like an old friend who knows his body better than he knows it himself. Knows how to make him feel so much pleasure it blinds someone who is already blind.

        Kenma, Tetsurou says. Kenma, Kenma, Kenma. He moans it without shame, letting the notes of his voice crash into the tympanic membrane in Kenma’s ear. His hands are moving all over Kenma’s body now, while he moans and moans over and over. His name, only his name. Kenma, Kenma, Kenma.

        Yes, Kenma keeps saying. He tries to nod, tries to open his eyes, tries to move so that Tetsurou’s lips fit more tightly, but he cannot do anything. He can only say Yes, Yes, Yes. Trying to reach the climax of a dream that can never be reached. Only in nightmares, perhaps.

        The scenery changes now. Kenma’s position changes, too. He is on the edge of a cliff. He is still naked, and the roughness of the grass and the dirty and the small pebbles is rough against his skin. He is sitting, and his legs are dangling over the edge. If he leans forward just a bit, he feels the sensation that he’s about to fall, and he can see the tumultuous waters waiting for his sacrifice below. They are calling to him, but he’s not quite sure where they will take him, so he doesn’t lean forward any more. He puts his hands calmly in his lap and just stares at the water. The sun is almost gone now, hidden behind the dominating gray clouds.

        Tetsurou is still here. He is sitting behind Kenma, legs around him, also dangling over the edge. He is naked, too, and Kenma’s eyes are open now. But he tries to turn around and look at Tetsurou and he finds himself only able to look forward. He cannot look back, not even when Tetsurou puts his hands on Kenma’s shoulders. He digs his fingers in like a massage, pushing in and up with this thumb, motions somehow erotic. His breathing is gravelly against the back of Kenma’s neck. His hair is billowing in the wind and he pictures that it must be tickling Tetsurou’s nose. Tetsurou leans his forehead down against the back of Kenma’s neck and his fingers begin to slow. He moves them, delicately, around Kenma’s neck. If he squeezes, he can choke him—but he does not squeeze. Instead, he hovers. Teasing every goosebump on Kenma’s neck. Moving around, up, down, cupping his Adam’s apple in his palm. Kenma arches his neck back, so that Tetsurou can touch him more, and stares up at the clouds.

        I’m going to count every vertebrae, Tetsurou says, and puts his lips to the ridges of Kenma’s spine. One, here...traces a line with his tongue down. Two. Three. Four—oh, no, did I skip one? Let me start over. He puts the palms of his hand against Kenma’s chest and pulls him back, spreads his fingers as far as they can go, as if trying to reach every single corner of the earth from Kenma’s chest. Maybe he’ll reach. Kenma smiles thinking about it. If anyone can, it’s Tetsurou, he thinks.

        As his lips continue, his tongue continues, his words slurred and his hair coarse, Kenma feels the wet head of Tetsurou’s hard cock brush his lower back. You must want to fuck me, Tetsurou, perhaps just as badly as I want you to fuck me. Keep touching me until it becomes so much that you burst, so much that you lose your sense of self and together we tumble from this cliff down into the waves and there in the water we can fuck each other all we want because who gives a shit, we’ll be dead soon enough, locked together at the bottom of the ocean where nobody will find us and tell us that maybe it was a bad idea, maybe we shouldn’t have fucked each other, maybe we should’ve stuck to raising cats and braiding hair and sharing sandwiches that really suck to begin with.

        Don’t let your tongue leave the confines of your lips, because if they do then the gates of hell will open and suck us in the same way that your tongue sucks the saltiness from my skin. Don’t let yourself get away with those kisses, the ones on my forehead at night when I fall asleep and you think you’re the only one to know. I’ll know, my skin knows. Clench your fingers into tight fists when you feel the urge to reach out and touch me because god knows it would be better to cut your own hand off than touch me like this—like your life depends on it, like you’re drawing a path toward the rest of your life traced in my sweat.

        god knows it would be better to fall off this cliff

        god fucking knows

        the cats know, too.       

 

* * *

 

        Kenma woke up with tears in his eyes and the worst erection of his life. There was a blanket draped over his body, one that Tetsurou had undoubtedly put there, and when he reached up to rub his eyes, he realized that the braid Tetsurou had done for him was probably ruined. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but after a few moments, Kuroo Jr. hopped up onto the couch and meowed in Kenma’s face. She was hungry. Kenma, drowsy and grasping in vain at the fleeting images of his dream, reached up to bury his fingers in her fur. She pushed her head up against his sweating palm. When she grew bored of that, she pawed at his face, and pressed her nose against his cheek. He managed to push her away gently and sit up, and once she was sure that he had woken up, she jumped down from the couch and moved expectantly to the kitchen.

        Kenma stood up and moved to give her some extra turkey they had in the fridge. He’d have to get some for Kenma Jr., too. He glanced over his shoulder. The door to Tetsurou’s room was still closed, but he could hear sounds coming from inside. Either Tetsurou really was on the phone with someone, probably Koutarou, or he was listening to music. Kenma drove away the desire to go his room and knock. Because then Tetsurou would open the door, ask if he’d had a good nap, notice his boner and awkwardly stumble back into his room because then he’d get one and it would just be an awful, terrible mess. Kenma would have to suppress the urge to say, “Kuro, would you come back and kiss my neck again?”

        He’d never wanted anything as desperately as he wanted that.

        After he gave the cats their food, he retreated to his room and closed the door, quietly enough that Tetsurou probably wouldn’t hear it. He got back into bed and, though he hated himself for doing it, he touched himself because it was painful now. He closed his eyes and he had to think of Tetsurou while he did it. The cats started meowing and pawing at his door so he buried his head into the pillows so that he couldn’t hear them, not while he was holding back tears and imagining Tetsurou’s hands there instead of his own to relieve himself of his stupid, unfair pain. He came into a tissue and threw it into the trash next to his finished Coke bottles and broken hair ties. Maybe Tetsurou would see it when he came in.

        Just then, a knock on the door accompanied the cats’ meows. Kenma turned the lights back on and opened the door. Tetsurou leaned against the doorway, arms across his chest, perpetual smile there.

        “Hey, sleepyhead. Had a good nap?”

        Kenma nodded and hoped his cheeks weren’t too red.

        “Perfect. Feeling refreshed, then?”

        “Not really,” Kenma shrugged.

        “What do you say we go out for dinner today?”

        “What? Why?”

        “To get you out of this house. I can redo your hair, and you can put on a pretty dress and do your makeup, and we can go to some fancy ass restaurant and pretend that we’re rich and bougie.”

        Kenma blinked as the cats began to weave between their legs.

        “But that’ll be expensive,” he said quietly.

        “That’s the point.”

        “I don’t—”

        “Listen. Sometimes, I think it’s good to just spend a stupid amount of money on something, just for the hell of it. We can order the most expensive damn things on the menu, get an entire bottle of wine just for the two of us and get so drunk that everyone at the restaurant stares _daggers_ at us. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

        “We have stuff in the fridge. We can just cook dinner.”

        “Aw, c’mon, Kenma. Don’t be like that. We’ll cook tomorrow, all right? But this place feels too stuffy to me tonight.”

        He was still smiling down at Kenma. Hair falling across his face, determined flash in his deceivingly blank eyes. It wasn’t fair that he was so much taller than Kenma.

        “I don’t have a lot of money,” Kenma persisted.

        “I do. At least for tonight,” Tetsurou winked. “Listen, what’s the most expensive thing you own?”

        “That red dress with the rhinestones.”

        “Wear it.”

        “I’ve never worn it. I don’t even have shoes to match.”

        “Wear your high tops.”

        “You want me to wear my Converse with that dress?”

        “Good, it’s decided. I’m gonna wear a full suit.”

        “Kuro, why...?”

        Kenma’s voice trailed off. He knew what Tetsurou’s answer would be. “Do I need a reason to take my best friend out to dinner?” He knew exactly why Tetsurou was doing this. Because he pitied Kenma, and wanted to do what he could to help Kenma, and felt deep in his soul that having Kenma put on his most expensive dress and go out to impress people would be a good way to cheer him up.

        And he wasn’t wrong.

        Kenma had been wanting an excuse to wear that dress.

        “Okay. I’ll go with you, but only if you have a matching tie,” Kenma said.

        “Awesome! I already made reservations.”

        “Right...”

        Tetsurou grinned that grin and reach down and ruffled Kenma’s already messy hair.

        “Come on. Let me braid your hair again.”

        “A braid? Are you serious? No, you have to do something more formal than that.”

        “Oh, fuck, you’re right. Ooh, how about a low chignon?”

        “Do you know how to do that?”

        “Who do you think you’re talking to? Just bring me like a million bobby pins.”

        Kenma, holding back his smile, went into his bathroom to get the bobby pins.

        Tetsurou didn’t have a reason to know how to do a chignon. And yet Kenma trusted that he could.

        He was glad that the sandwich hadn’t filled his stomach. He wanted to run Tetsurou’s wallet dry because then he’d know that Tetsurou spent that money on him, and maybe in some disturbing and twisted way, that might make up for the fact that Tetsurou wouldn’t touch him anymore or look at him like he was the most beautiful person in the world—like he had before—ever again.


	5. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which I love Tsukki

**5**

**Kuroo**

After dinner, walking up the stairs to their apartment, Tetsurou let Kenma walk ahead of him, and it was a mistake. He’d known that it would be, but Kenma was a real lightweight and was awfully tipsy from just two glasses of wine. Tetsurou had had to hold his arm to walk him back to the car, so it was only natural for him to insist that Kenma go up in front.

And still, it wasn’t fair. This was cruel—Tetsurou was being cruel to himself. Of course, with things the way they were, there were very few situations in which Tetsurou from that moment on wouldn’t be participating in inevitable masochism and self-deprivation. He would have to get used to this agony, would have to continue with this expert poker face that Kenma had so easily believed. (Or had he? Tetsurou wasn’t really sure.) But would that mean that, for every day for the rest of his life, Tetsurou would have to suffer the pain of Kenma’s beauty? Would have to walk up the stairs behind him, watching him step, step, step—watching the little strands of hair falling from the bobby pins on the back of his head, watching the way his slouched shoulders rippled, watching his feet and his calves tighten—all from behind? Unable to reach out and touch?

It was so unbearably cruel.

But Tetsurou had decided something. When he’d gone out to the living room, to grab a bowl of cereal from the kitchen, and he’d seen Kenma asleep on the couch. Kenma had looked innocent. Unfairly so, no tension in his face and strands of hair framing his closed eyes. His face crushed against the couch while he held a blanket to his chest and the cats were curled at his feet. It was clear, then, that Kenma hadn’t slept at all the night before. It wasn’t uncommon, Tetsurou had tried to reason, for Kenma not to sleep.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was because of him.

So he had decided, choking on the air because of how fucking beautiful Kenma was, that he would need to forever push back the emotions that he’d let come out that night, when they had jumped into the abyss together. If Kenma was to get better, if Kenma was to find himself and stop being nervous, scared, awkward around the one person who had always been there to support him, Tetsurou would need to sacrifice the possibility of really, truly being with him. It was clear. Especially after the way Kenma had reacted—the way he’d flinched, how quiet and fleeting and evasive. He was in pain. And Tetsurou couldn’t stand it. He would have to pretend, really. Would have to pretend that making love to Kenma had meant nothing to him, would have to pretend that he wasn’t falling deeper every second, would have to pretend to be strong because Kenma didn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t pretend. He would keep crying himself to sleep, torn by something he couldn’t really decide whether he wanted.

Tetsurou would just have to decide for him.

Things had to go back to the way they used to be.

It was the best solution—if he could pretend, then it would be easier for Kenma.

So he bit his lower lip as his eyes pressed into Kenma’s back. He was a bit more sober. Hand on the rail as he struggled up the stairs. Red dress falling over his frame, falling at his ankles above his black, worn-out Converse shoes. Tetsurou reached his fingers out, and his fingers brushed the edge of Kenma’s dress. Just for a moment, a single fleeting second when the fabric was smooth and delicate in his grimy fingers. It made him feel so strangely intimate, even though Kenma had no idea. Maybe that was where the intimacy came from, in the end.

They got the door of their apartment and Tetsurou realized that he was running a bit late. Kei would be arriving to open the bar soon, and Tetsurou still needed to make sure Kenma was okay. He wasn’t worried, though. He was already sobering up. Or so he had to tell himself, when he came to the conclusion that Kenma was a big boy and could take care of himself; Tetsurou was coming up with excuses to spend more time around him. Being aware of it made it that much worse.

Kenma started taking his dress off as soon as he walked into the door, before he even untied his shoes. He gracefully lifted it up over his head and tossed it to the ground, leaving himself naked but for his briefs, socks, and shoes. Tetsurou couldn’t tear his eyes from the vast canvas of his back, but when Kenma turned over his shoulder and began taking the bobby pins out of his hair, he tore his gaze away.

“Dinner was nice, Kuro,” he said, his words slightly elongated. “Do you have to go down to the bar now?”

“Yeah. Kei will be here soon to open up.”

“Okay.”

“Gonna work on that game?”

“Yes. Will you bring me a Coke?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe when you get back I can paint your nails,” Kenma said. “Black, of course. You always look so good in black.”

He wasn’t smiling, but there was a glisten in his eyes. Tetsurou blinked at him, hair falling around his face and cheeks red and beautiful golden eyes that lit up the whole room. Then he smiled, winked.

“You bet.” 

Once he’d changed and Kenma was back in his room, swaying as he sat and fiddled with the keys of his dim computer, he bid him and the cats a farewell and began to make his way down to the bar. But before he went down the stairs, he took a moment to stand on his doorstep and breathe. Closed his eyes, leaned back. Rocked ever so slightly. Wished that he had the courage to bang his head back against the door hard enough to hurt, maybe even hard enough to draw blood. That pain would’ve been better than this one.

He was letting Kenma go, and he knew it was going to kill him, and he didn’t have a choice but to slowly dig his own grave. The same one he’d already been digging. 

Tetsurou gathered his strength and plastered a smile on his face and went down to his bar. By the time he got down, Kei was already there, bringing the chairs down from the tables and getting ready to open. He glanced up at Tetsurou, gaze hovering above his glasses, and blinked slowly.

“And the queen has arrived,” he sighed. “Now, the real question: will she help me open the bar?”

“Do I pay you to work, or throw shade?”

“Both, though you’ll have to start paying me overtime for the shade. It’s taken a lot of effort lately.”

“Oh, step off.”

They made small talk while they cleaned. Kei and Tetsurou were friends, surely—at least, Tetsurou would define their relationship as a friendly one. He wasn’t sure about Kei. Kei was, in a weird way, both a complete enigma and a completely open-book. Tetsurou had seen his type before, a pained and complex inner being behind a façade of sarcasm and cynicism. He was good at dealing with his type. He gave Kei his space, threw him subtle smiles and winks and words of affirmation, but he teased him and pushed his buttons. Just enough that he wasn’t uncomfortable, but was eager to interact. Kei was a good kid. Tetsurou at least knew that much.

Tetsurou managed to squeeze out of Kei that he was having a few problems with his boyfriend—someone with whom he was in a very serious relationship, and had been for about five years now. They were committed to each other, Kei said, but just like any couple, they had their issues. Tetsurou didn’t press the issue. He let Kei talk about it as much as he wanted. But it was clear, by the way he left smears on the tables and the chairs were crooked, that Kei was bent up about it.

“We haven’t talked in three days,” he mumbled, flipping the closed sign over to open. “He’s too upset to say anything to me, I think, and I’ve just got too much damn pride.”

“So, suck it up and say you’re sorry.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Irrelevant.”

“Oh, like an old single asshole like you would know,” Kei said with a roll of his eyes. Tetsurou smiled and shrugged, unable to argue. Totally unable to argue. He couldn’t keep his gaze from flitting up toward the ceiling, where Kenma was working. Kei was observant, too.

“How’s your roommate situation?” he asked. Tetsurou blinked back to reality, paused for a moment, and then shrugged and started organizing cups along the bar.

“Fine. He has a deadline coming up so he’s working like crazy,” Tetsurou said. “Wish I could get him down to the bar every once in a while.”

“Eh, I don’t blame him for not coming down. What with assholes like those guys we saw the other day. Honestly, I wish I had enough nerve to stay up in my room like him. The world doesn’t deserve my fucking attention.”

Tetsurou raised his eyebrows, but Kei wasn’t paying attention. The first few customers had come in through the door and he was checking their IDs. So Tetsurou tried his hardest to push Kenma from his thoughts (or at least give himself the semblance of distraction) and focus on his customers.

It was, in the end, a surprisingly long evening. Tetsurou ended up running upstairs with a Coke, finding Kenma exactly how he expected him—curled in front of his computer, at that point desperate for some kind of sugary, carbonated beverage. They were very busy that night. Tetsurou wished that he’d hired a few more people but, of course, was satisfied because Kei was a ridiculously competent and efficient worker. And, though customers sometimes tended not to like him due to his stand-offish and sarcastic personality, he brought a nice vibe to the place. At least, Tetsurou thought so. His refined posture and shimmering glasses and always-present-headphones brought something different to this place of darkness and drunkenness and sex and raw lack of inhibitions. He was always glad he’d hired Kei.

Together, after the last few people had been sent home, Kei and Tetsurou cleaned up.

“If your boyfriend is waiting for you, just head home, Tsukki,” Tetsurou said. “I can handle it.”

“No. You’re paying me to do my job, so I’m gonna do it,” Kei replied smoothly.

“Well, all right. While you’re at it, take these bottles to the back, would ya?”

He put a few empty bottles on the counter. Kei, without so much as a bat of his eyelashes, whisked them from the counter and headed to the backroom. There, they stored all their empty bottles and took them down at the end of the week to the recycling place. As Kei disappeared to the back, Tetsurou continued cleaning. There had been no altercations or especially bad drunk episodes that night, so the cleaning wasn’t too bad. He would be sleeping in tomorrow, of course, but he never minded staying up a few more hours at night.

But he wasn’t working with a smile that night. He couldn’t get this burden off his back. Now he was carrying Kenma’s, too. But that was all right. His shoulders were stronger than Kenma’s. He could afford to carry the world on his back, a world that would’ve broken Kenma. But it was heavy. Tetsurou liked to smile while he worked, because it helped him get through it—at that moment, thinking of the person having trouble sleeping above him, he couldn’t do it. Not even a hint of a smile.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of glass shattering. He dropped what he was doing and bolted, coming to a screeching halt at the doorway of what they called Alcohol Purgatory. Kei stood in the center of the room, surrounded by broken pieces of glass and blood on his hands.

“Oh, Tsukki,” Tetsurou sighed.

“S-sorry, Kuroo...”

“No, no, don’t you dare apologize. I’ll be right back. Don’t move, all right?”

“Actually, I was planning on doing a little dance, but now that you ask—”

Tetsurou hurried back to the bar, where he kept a first aid kit. He grabbed it, along with a broom and a few trash bags, and ran to take care of things.

“What happened?” Tetsurou asked. He started with clearing away the broken glass, gathering it in the trash bags and setting it off to the side. He would have to vacuum tomorrow morning.

“They—they just slipped,” Kei stuttered.

“Yeah?” Tetsurou paused. “Tsukki, you’ve been working here for a while now. You’re not the kinda guy to let shit slip.”

“Okay, well, it happened. What do you want from me?”

“I think you’re more upset than you’re letting on.”

“So? Then I’m upset. I’ll deal with it and it’ll be fine.”

“Is it Yamaguchi?”

Kei didn’t respond. Tetsurou leaned the broom against the doorway and reached for the first aid kit. He pulled out some rubbing alcohol and gauze. He stood up, a few inches shorter than Kei, and reached his hands out. Without looking into his eyes, Kei put his hands in Tetsurou’s. They were trembling.

“Listen. I don’t know what a couple like you would fight about, but if it’s got you this upset, you should do something about it. You’ve been together a long time. Would be a shame to let it end.”

“It’s not going to end,” Kei hissed. “It’s just...sometimes I feel like we’re too different. Like there’s no real reason to be together.”

“Sorry, this is gonna sting a little.” Tetsurou began dabbing the cuts and cleaning Kei’s wound with the rubbing alcohol. Kei sucked in a breath, face scrunching and eyes narrowing. “I’m not too familiar with the dynamics of your relationship with Yamaguchi, but I do think you love him, and that’s enough of a reason to be together.”

“What if I’m hurting him too much? He’s too nice to be with someone like me.”

“Hey, you’re plenty nice.”

Kei just raised an eyebrow, and Tetsurou smiled and held back his laughter.

“Fine, maybe you’re not, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a good person or that you’re not good for him. He’s probably great for you.”

“Then it’s not balanced.”

“I never said that.”

“Why am I even asking you? Like you know what you’re talking about,” Kei mumbled with a click of his tongue.

“Believe it or not, I’ve had my fair share of romantic endeavors,” Tetsurou said with a wink. Kei couldn’t hold it in, and laughed out loud.

“Please! Like you could hold down _any_ type of relationship,” he leered. Tetsurou just smiled. He was wrapping the gauze around Kei’s hands now. His fingers moved slowly, pushing gently on Kei’s skin.

“Besides. It’s obvious,” Kei continued.

“What’s obvious?”

“You’re in love with your roommate.”

Tetsurou didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes on Kei’s hands and suddenly the room felt very hot. Alcohol Purgatory had terrible lighting.

“You’re always looking up there. And he always comes up in your conversations. How long have you two been friends?”

“A while.”

“Right. Well, I’m pretty observant, but I doubt I’m the only one that knows.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Don’t bother. Love isn’t worth it.”

“That’s not true. If you really thought that, you wouldn’t still be with Yamaguchi.”

“Or, I _do_ think that, and I’m just in too deep to do anything about now.”

“How deep?”

“Deep.”

“Bummer. Single life is it, man.”

The lie was written in the air as it left his lips. There was no point in lying to Kei anyway, and they both knew it. But now they were stuck here together, woeful and somber in this room of empty wine bottles and the stench of old alcohol. Kei’s hands still trembled in Tetsurou’s.

“Has Yamaguchi ever cheated on you?” Tetsurou said, without thinking.

“What? No.”

“Have you ever cheated on him?”

“N...no.”

“He trusts you.”

“I don’t know. I would hope so.”

“Do you think he’d still love you if you fucked someone else?”

“Tadashi? Probably. He’s a sucker like that.”

“A sucker? Interesting word choice.”

“Why, what word would you have used?”

“Something not so derogatory. It’s a good trait to love someone that much, to see the goodness in people.”

“A trait I don’t have. I only see the shitty.”

“So you wouldn’t love him anymore if he fucked someone else?”

Tetsurou looked up into Kei’s eyes. His eyelids were drooping. They were much closer than Tetsurou thought—this room was suddenly so small. The walls closing in on them.

“I don’t know. I probably still would.”

“You really do love him.”

“Yes.”

“Just like I love Kenma.”

“Yeah.”

        “Have you ever wanted to fuck anybody else?” 

        “No. But I have wanted to not be in love with him.” 

        “That would make things a lot easier, huh.” 

        “Yeah. Sometimes I lay awake at night and I think of ways that I could make him not love me, so that he would break it off and not have to deal with me anymore. God knows I’m not brave enough to break it off.” 

        “That’s pretty fucked up, Tsukki.” 

        “Like you’re one to talk about fucked up. Bottling everything up and acting all creepy with Kozume.” 

        “Right, like I could ever tell him that I loved him.” 

        “And like I could ever get Tadashi to hate me.” 

        “Nothing would make him hate you? Absolutely nothing?” Tetsurou smiled and leaned closer. 

        “Maybe if I were a serial killer. Even that’s a stretch, though,” Kei grinned.

        “Seems like a great guy.”

        “Way too good for me.” 

        “That’s how I feel about Kenma sometimes.”

        “Guess we’re both just pieces of shit, huh?” Kei murmured. 

        “Guess we are.” 

        And then they clambered for each other, and they fucked among those empty, floating bottles, wondering just how much love they had inside them.


	6. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning!!
> 
> discussions of suicide and depression to ensue!! 
> 
> xoxo

**6**

**Kenma**

Kenma felt intimate with the darkness and his own loneliness. It was the closest thing to him, closer even than he was to himself. He knew the contours and the indentations and the twists and the turns of his loneliness. The crushing feeling, of being at the bottom of the ocean with water pressed against his chest, was at least familiar. There were so few ways for him to feel, that he grasped this one sensation, at least while he was awake. When sleep was kind enough to come to him, he could feel so much more. But for now, in the darkness, with his computer channeling everyone that he couldn’t be and everything he couldn’t do into this video game, intimacy with loneliness was all he could feel. That, and the cats rubbing against his sides, purring, messing up his codes and nearly knocking over his empty Coke bottle. He liked to imagine that sometimes, Tetsurou would drink from it first on his way up the stairs, leaving the residue from his lips on the edges of the bottle opening.

He was nearly done coding when he heard the door open, and a sliver of light pierced the darkness. He curled in further to himself and narrowed his eyes at the computer screen. The footsteps that entered stumbled a bit. The door closed clumsily. He heard clambering before the lights came on and he flinched. He was confused—usually, Tetsurou gave him warning before he turned the lights on because he knew how much Kenma liked the darkness. Sorry, but I’m turning on the lights now, kitty. Close your eyes! I’m home, and the darkness doesn’t sit well with me. Let there be light, and black hair, and piercing eyes and snaggle tooths! 

From his spot in his room, with the door open, Kenma could lean forward and look into the main entryway. He saw Tetsurou. Usually smiling, tired but content, after a night working the bar. Not so today. He was leaning against the closed door, knees trembling, head in his hands and breathing ragged. Seeing him like that sent Kenma’s insides tumbling. He blinked, once, twice, three times, to make sure that his relationship with the loneliness wasn’t starting to project itself onto his reality, morph it. But no. That was definitely Tetsurou, looking as if he were fighting so hard with himself. Or a demon on his back that he couldn’t shake off. And he’d been so lively earlier, Kenma mused. Told him to put on that dress and done his hair.

“Kuro...?” he called weakly. Probably so weakly that Tetsurou hadn’t heard him.

Tetsurou ran a hand over his face, pushed the hair back from his eyes for a moment before it fell back into place and he buried his face again in his palms. Kenma Jr. stood from her spot and meandered over to him, more adventurous than sleepy Kuroo Jr. She weaved through Tetsurou’s legs, meowed up at him. Usually Tetsurou was such a sucker for those cats. Spoiled them to pieces, called them his princesses, bought expensive toys and food and showed off pictures of them to friends who couldn’t have cared any less.  

After a few moments, perhaps unaware of Kenma’s droopy eyes on him, Tetsurou pushed himself off the door, locked it, and began to take off his shoes. Either he hadn’t noticed Kenma, or he was choosing to ignore him. His bow tie was crooked. Kenma couldn’t muster the energy to call his name again, so he just turned dejectedly back to his computer screen. He couldn’t remember the last time Tetsurou had come inside and not immediately come to greet him. He found himself blinking back tears. He made a few mistakes in the codes and had to restart, and that made him so frustrated that he had to pause and take some deep breaths. He wanted another Coke. Tetsurou, still in his uniform, went to the fridge and got out a beer. Kenma didn’t drink beer (or any alcohol, usually), but Tetsurou always wanted some in the fridge. Then, he opened a drawer next to the fridge and pulled out a little plastic bag.

Usually, he would offer some to Kenma. When Kenma was in the mood, he’d smoke with Tetsurou, but the moods were rare. More often than not he would decline, and quietly sit while Tetsurou got high and put his head in Kenma’s lap or pulled Kenma to his feet and forced him to dance. Tonight, though, Tetsurou said nothing. He sat at the kitchen table, sipping his beer, and rolled a joint in silence. Didn’t even put on any music. The cats hated the smell, but its absence was the one thing Tetsurou never gave them. Kenma, realizing that Tetsurou was in his own world, kept his vacant gaze on him. Watched him smoothly, silently roll the joint, light it, bring it to his lips, inhale long and deep and sad. Something was broken in Tetsurou—like a toy that looked the same, but didn’t quite feel the same when you held it in your hand.

Kenma Jr., suddenly aware of the smell, trotted her way back to clean and flowery Kenma. While he stroked her eager head, Tetsurou arched his neck back over the chair and blew smoke at the ceiling. Kenma felt strangely voyeuristic. Tetsurou was never this unaware (deliberate or not) and Kenma didn’t like the sensation of watching him and not being seen.

Tetsurou was the only person who ever paid attention to Kenma and now he was ignoring him, or, worse, couldn’t see him there, and it was terribly painful.

Kenma stood up to close the door. If this was what Tetsurou wanted, to be alone and unseen, then Kenma would leave him alone and not see him. But as his hand wrapped around the door and he began to close it, Tetsurou turned in the chair and held a hand up.

“Wait, wait, don’t go to bed yet,” he said lazily. Kenma shuffled his feet and stared at his toes.

“What do you need?” he replied, his voice bumpy and scratchy.

“I wanna ask you something. Oh, did you want a hit?” He held the joint out, as if Kenma could reach it from where he stood. Kenma shook his head. “I was just wondering. You like me, right?”

“Like...you?”

“Like, you’re my friend, yeah?”

“Sure, I’m your friend.”

“But what if I wasn’t?”

“Kuro, wha—?”

“Is there anything I could possibly do that would make you not wanna be my friend anymore?” he asked. “Tsukki and I were talking about it. What’s the _worst_ thing you can imagine me doing? Would you still be my friend even if I did that thing?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Think it over. I’m curious.” He brought the joint to his lips, then he smirked and shook his head. “Then again, curiosity killed the cat.”

“Satisfaction brought it back,” Kenma said.

“Huh?”

“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. That’s the full phrase.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Kenma was drowning in the silence. He liked the silence generally, but at that moment, it was suffocating him.

“I’m going to bed now,” he said.

“All right. Thanks for going to dinner with me. The dress looks killer on you.”

“Good night.”

“Night, kitty.”

When Kenma closed the door, left alone with the cats and his computer and the beautiful, familiar loneliness, he realized that Tetsurou had probably fucked Kei Tsukishima. And who was he to judge, who was he to blame?

_He should fuck whomever he wants._

But it wasn’t him, so it made him upset despite his thoughts, and he didn’t sleep at all and he kept thinking about how nice it would be to be as tall as Kei Tsukishima. Tall and lean and pretty, with thick eyelashes and a condescending smirk. Tall enough and lean enough and pretty enough that Tetsurou might want to fuck him more than just once.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Kenma was in the car next to Tetsurou being driven to his therapist’s office.  

They’d managed to convince themselves that everything was back to the way it was. At least, that’s how Kenma saw it. For all he knew, Tetsurou really did feel like things were back to normal—he had to, right? Since he’d already moved on to fucking other people? It was the only logical explanation. Tetsurou’s smile was back to being crooked, teeth glistening, hair shiny and messy, sarcasm quick, kindness raw and naked. He was exactly the same. Kenma thought Tetsurou was magical, to go back so easily. It was something Kenma could never have dreamt of doing. Then again, his ‘normal’ was so far from what normal meant. He was already fucked up enough, so even if the fact that Tetsurou would never call him beautiful again made him want to rip his own heart out and roast it on a spit, there wasn’t really a difference. He stayed quiet. Found solace in being alone (what does solace mean? not having to deal with people’s eyes on him, not having to muster the energy to hold a reciprocal conversation, not having to try to explain why he seemed so stand-offish to people who were just trying to be kind to him). Played on his consoles, coded his games, communicated silently with the cats, said very little to Tetsurou because he’d never had to say much.

That was the difference, though. Tetsurou had always been able to understand Kenma so well—could read his thoughts through the blinks of his eyelashes, understand his emotions through the styles of his hair or the wings of his eyeliner. Now he couldn’t. Kenma’s thoughts were too jumbled, now in a foreign language that Tetsurou would never, could never, understand. It hurt so much to have lost the one person who understood him, it hurt so much, not even the cats could understand him the way Tetsurou could.

_You probably can’t even realize that I let my hair down today and that means I didn’t have the energy to style it because I’m busy hurting. You didn’t offer to braid it for me._

“I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Tetsurou said as he pulled into the parking lot of the psychiatrist’s office.

“Okay. Thanks.”

He got out and closed the door. He did it gently. Tetsurou had a very beautiful, very expensive car; he didn’t like to spend a lot of money, but he had saved up for years and, after dropping out of college, had had enough to buy this car. But it was such an expensive car that how he’d really managed to afford it was a mystery, even to Kenma, who’d been living him for years. It was a Corvette Stingray, shimmering black with red interior and a convertible top. He looked like a moviestar when he drove it, with his elbow out of the window and his sunglasses on—Kenma always felt out of place curled up in the passenger seat beside him.

He watched the car pulled out of the lot before he went inside and checked in at the desk.

“Kenma! Your hair looks beautiful,” the receptionist said. An absurdly tall man who had, since Kenma started regularly coming in, taken a strange interest in Kenma. His name was Lev and Kenma wasn’t particularly fond of him.

“Thank you,” he replied.

“Did you use a special shampoo or something?”

“No. It’s natural.”

“Wow. Wish I could get my hair to look like that. But when I grow it out it just looks ridiculous,” Lev laughed. Kenma shrugged and took his seat, no longer able to muster the strength to stand and converse with an exhausting person like half-Russian Lev. “Okay, well, the doc’ll be with you in a minute.”

“All right.”

He pulled out his 3DS and put his feet up on the chair of this sitting room. It was so quiet, and he was the only one in there. The psychiatrist must have been in a meeting with someone. It wasn’t exactly 2 yet, so he was technically on time.

At exactly 2 o’clock (Kenma was watching the hands of the clock), the door opened and a young woman scurried out, thanking the doctor profusely. Then, the doctor himself poked his head through the doorway and smiled at Kenma.

“Hey, Kenma! Ready?”

“Yeah.”

He followed his psychiatrist back to his office. His name was Dr. Yaku and Kenma had started seeing him after he’d tried to kill himself five years ago. Tetsurou had found him after he returned home from class with blood running down his arms and the water in the bathtub turning red. It probably would have worked, Kenma liked to muse, if Tetsurou weren’t so cheap and had bought some sharper razors. It was also the explanation for why Tetsurou’s jaw was always stubbly.

_Well, even if Tetsurou doesn’t really get it anymore, Yaku-sensei probably does._

Dr. Yaku knew Kenma frighteningly well. He’d been his psychiatrist for five years. Almost every week for the past five years Kenma had been coming. Some part of him considered Dr. Yaku a friend. Another part pushed those pleasant thoughts away and said instead, “No, he’s just the man hired to make you less fucked up.”

“So? How’s it going?” Dr. Yaku asked. He opened the door to his office and let Kenma go in ahead of him. At this point, Dr. Yaku’s office was one of the few places that Kenma felt comfortable in; it didn’t fit with what one might expect from a doctor’s office. It was bright, with windows covering the walls, and it was very clean and nice. The chairs were colorful and cozy, there were beautiful pictures on the walls and exciting bookshelves and there was always nice music playing. Chopin today, certainly because Kenma had expressed before that he appreciated Chopin.

“It’s going all right.”

“Finish that game you’ve been coding?”

“Not yet. Almost.”

“Can I hear what it’s about?”

“Sure, but only because you’re not allowed to tell anyone else,” Kenma said. Dr. Yaku smiled, sitting in the red armchair, and Kenma lay down on the long pink sofa. He stared up at the ceiling and listened to the music.

“It’s about a child who’s lonely. The child doesn’t have any friends except for a cat named Cat. The child lives in a sandbox. One day, another child named Shiroo comes and takes the lonely child on a journey to the ocean.”

“Why?”

“Because neither of them knows how to swim, and they want to teach each other.”

“What a nice premise.”

Kenma shrugged.

“Hopefully people will like it. It’s my favorite that I’ve done yet. The gameplay is cool,” he said. “Once I get it to the higher-ups they’ll hire someone to do the music for it, and I always really like that part.”

“Why the name Shiroo?”

Kenma reached his hand up and stretched his fingers as far as they would go.

“I don’t know. I like it,” he said.

“Nothing to do with your friend Kuroo, then?”

“Maybe.”

“How’s he doing?”

It wasn’t particularly odd that Dr. Yaku was asking about Tetsurou. He always asked about Kenma’s friends and relationships.

“He’s fine. I think he fucked Tsukishima a few days ago.”

“Hmm?”

“You know that guy—the one who works at the bar with Kuro?”

“Oh yeah. Tall, blond.”

“That’s the one.”

“And you think your friend Kuroo had sex with him?”

“Actually, I don’t think. I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. He came back and was acting really weird. He didn’t ask me before he turned on the lights and he got high, and he asked me if there was anything he could possibly do to make me hate him.”

Dr. Yaku raised his eyebrows and tapped his fingers against his crossed legs.

“Well, is there?”

“Is there what?”

“Anything he could do to make you hate him?”

Kenma thought for a moment, but the vacancy in his mind was feigned. He’d always known the answer to this question.

“Yeah. Yeah, there is.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“Wanna tell me?”

“If he ever stopped caring. If he got tired of me. Like, if he stopped trying to make me go places and meet people and not take a razor to my wrists, I would hate him.”

“As your best friend, that would be a pretty nasty thing to do, huh.”

“Yeah. I would hate him. I’d probably forgive him in the end, though, if he apologized.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’s my best friend and I don’t really know where to go without him.”

“Do you feel dependent on him, Kenma?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” If there was one thing Kenma was good at by now, it was knowing when to admit to himself the ugly truths of his life. His dependence on Tetsurou being one of them. “He’s as natural to me in my life now as breathing. Or video games.”

“What about him? Do you feel like the relationship is reciprocal?”

“Uh, I guess I don’t know. I can’t read his mind,” Kenma shrugged.

“All right, how about this. Has he ever expressed the desire to not be around you?”

“When he fucked Tsukishima.”

“Kenma, can I ask you a very personal question?”

“Well, you’re my psychiatrist, so yeah.”

Dr. Yaku smiled, and his expression remained soft.

“Have _you_ ever had sex with Kuroo?” he said quietly. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I feel like you want to talk about him. He’s come up in a lot our conversations lately. Understanding your relationship with him might allow me better insight into your state of mind at the moment.”

“No, you’re right,” Kenma sighed. “I do wanna talk about him.”

“And why’s that?”

Kenma told Dr. Yaku what happened that night when Tetsurou had taken him into his arms and given him a taste of bliss. He wasn’t able to finish telling the story before he burst into tears there on the couch and cried for twenty minutes straight, repeating through his sobs, “He doesn’t want me anymore, he doesn’t want me anymore, he doesn’t want me anymore.”

“Kenma, are you in love with Kuroo?” Dr. Yaku asked.

Kenma answered so swiftly that he didn’t even realize it was the conclusion he’d come to, the conclusion he’d been at, for a long time now. Maybe years. He said, without hesitation, “Yes. And it hurts, because he doesn’t want our relationship to change, but I would be so happy if it changed, and now things have changed anyway but for the worse. He didn’t even offer to braid my hair this morning.”   

“Do you want me to braid your hair for you, Kenma?”

“No. Only Kuro knows how to do it.”

“All right.”

“Do you want to see a picture I took of Kenma Jr. this morning?”

“I would love to.” 


	7. 7

**7**

**Kuroo**

        When Tetsurou pulled out of the therapist’s parking lot, he drove for a little bit, and then turned around and came back. He parked in an empty spot and reclined his seat, resigned to wait in that parking lot for the next hour or so before Kenma came back out. He’d had to at least make sure that Kenma believed he’d left. But he had nowhere to go, nobody to see, and his mind was going to be on Kenma anyway so he might as well be as close to him as humanly possible at that moment. He put his headphones on, pulled out his phone, and began scrolling through. Funny pictures, pictures of his friends, pictures of random strangers’ cats and dogs. Each minute lasted an eternity.

        At some point during these eternities, he received a phone call.

        “Hello?”

        “Hey, it’s me.”

        “Hi, me. I’m Kuroo.”

        “Shut the fuck up.”

        “Not sorry. So what’s up?” he snickered.

        “I can’t come into work today. Wanted to give you a heads-up. Sorry it’s such short notice.”

        “Oh. Uh, that’s okay. Is everything all right?”

        “Well.” He took a deep breath. “For the past three days, I’ve been cheating on my boyfriend, whom I’ve been dating for five years, with my boss. Do _you_ think everything is all right?”

        Tetsurou smiled quietly to himself. Of course nothing was all right, but at least he had the courage to pretend that it was. Or the cowardice? He wasn’t quite sure.

        “Right. Well, do what you have to.”

        “Thanks. Oh, and—”

        “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

        “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

        Kei hung up, and Tetsurou was alone in the car again. He couldn’t blame Kei—the two of them had majorly fucked up, and no doubt Kei was going to sit down and have a long conversation with his boyfriend that night. And, if his experience was anything like Tetsurou’s, he had a blistering headache and a crippling pain in his stomach that just wouldn’t stop. Tetsurou closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting the sun pour in onto his sweating face through the tinted car window.

        He only realized that he’d fallen asleep when a persistent tapping at that same window forced him awake. He jumped, wiped the drool from the side of his mouth, blinked out of his grogginess. His sleep had been dreamless. When he turned his face, Kenma was crouched outside the door, waving his hand, a lollipop in his lips. Tetsurou hurried to unlock the doors, and when Kenma heard the click, he walked around to the other side and curled up in the passenger seat. Practically before the door had closed, he had his 3DS out. Tetsurou could see the stick of the lollipop shifting, moving erratically from side to side, and imagined Kenma’s tongue behind his lips twirling around the sucker. When he felt his skin getting hot, he forced himself to look away. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

        “How was it?”

        “Fine,” Kenma said with a shrug. His voice muffled. Tetsurou glanced at him, furtively, through the corner of his eye and from behind his sunglasses. Even the fleeting, momentary sight of him made him grow hot again.

        “Are you hungry? Wanna stop for food?”

        “No. Can we please go home?”

        “Sure, sure,” Tetsurou replied. Kenma’s tone worried him. “Everything okay?”

        “I mean, no, but what’s new?”

        “Anything you wanna talk to me about? I know you just got out of your session but—”

        Kenma silently shook his head. His eyes were fixed, magnets, to the screen of his 3DS.

        “You sure?”

        “Yeah. You don’t get it, anyway. It’s fine.”

        That took Tetsurou off-guard. Kenma had never said something like that to him before; if anything, Kenma had always said the opposite. Perhaps not verbatim, but close enough that Tetsurou had felt it. That he _got_ Kenma. He got that sometimes, Kenma didn’t want to get out of bed, have a proper meal, shower, talk to anybody. He got that sometimes, Kenma just needed to cry. He got that Kenma needed someone to tell him how much he meant, otherwise his sense of self-value swiftly and ungraciously evaporated.

        “Kenma?” he heard himself say. “Kenma, talk to me.”

        “I don’t want to.”

        He almost didn’t see that the light was red. His stop was jerky, and it made Kenma fly forward before the seat belt ruthlessly pulled him back. He took the lollipop from his mouth, coughed harshly, and then put it back in.

        “S-sorry,” Tetsurou said quietly.

        “It’s all right. Just be careful. That kinda hurt.”

        “Did...did I say something to upset you?” Tetsurou ventured. Kenma shook his head, tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear. Kept his thumb on the buttons of his console.

        “No.”

        The light turned green, so Tetsurou put his foot on the gas and the car continued forward. They were about seven minutes from home. The air in the car was suddenly chilly.

        “Did something happen with the doctor?” Tetsurou asked.

        Kenma shook his head again.

        “Because if he said something to you, Kenma, I’ll—”

        “No. Nothing like that.”

        Tetsurou looked over at him again. He was chewing on his lower lip and holding his lollipop between his index finger and his thumb. His cheeks were pale, his eyes darting. He was nervous. Tetsurou wanted to reach out and touch him, but knew it was a bad idea.

        “Okay...”

        “But I did tell him that you’re fucking Tsukishima. I didn’t really mean to, but I did. It just came out. He asked me about you and I told him.”

        Tetsurou’s heart came out from his open lips. In his shock, he slammed his foot on the brake again. Harder. They both flew forward, Tetsurou nearly banging his head against the steering wheel and Kenma nearly being hurled through the window. His lollipop went flying into infinity. The cars behind them started honking. But Tetsurou couldn’t drive. His head was banging now, he couldn’t see straight, couldn’t catch his breath.

        _I never meant for you to find out._

“K-Kuro...” Kenma had his hands on the dashboard, bracing himself. His entire body was trembling, his hair a mess, tears streaming down his face. Tetsurou opened his mouth to say something, say anything, but nothing came out. He couldn’t even keep his eyes on Kenma. He turned away, panting, seeing red.

        “ _Kuro!”_

Kenma’s voice, high-pitched and piercing and shaking, brought him back to reality. He snapped back up, took a deep breath, and continued forward.

        “Sorry, sorry,” he repeated.

        “Me, too.”  

        He’d known this would happen, too. If Kenma knew that Tetsurou had fucked Kei (not even once—three times), he would feel like the world was crashing down on him, regardless of any feelings he did or didn’t have for Tetsurou. The little things didn’t matter. Tetsurou had known that, and it was why he’d tried so hard to hide it.

        But he should’ve known that Kenma was smarter than that. He was observant. He could read human beings like books, in a way that nobody else could.

        “I’m sorry, Kenma...”

        “You already apologized.”

        “I don’t mean about the car.”

        “You don’t have to apologize about anything. You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Kenma said. Even as he said the words, his voice was breaking. It made it so hard to drive straight. Tetsurou wished that they were home, that he was out of this car, he couldn’t fucking take it knowing that he’d let the most important person in his life down. He loved him, too, and still he’d made him feel like shit. How was that fair?

        For the rest of the three-minute drive, neither of them said anything. Kenma was still crying. Tetsurou’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel. When he finally parked the car, in the little garage down the road, he opened his mouth.

        “I really am sorry.”

        “Okay.”

        Kenma got out of the car and walked back to their place by himself. He didn’t bother waiting for Tetsurou. It left him cold, exhausted, crushed under the weight of his own remorse. The worst part—the absolute worst part—was that he _knew_ Kenma wasn’t doing it out of spite. He wasn’t doing it to make Tetsurou feel bad. He wasn’t like that. He was doing it because he truly didn’t want to be around him, and that hurt a million times more. When Tetsurou put his hand against his chest, he couldn’t even feel his own heartbeat.

 

* * *

 

        To sub in for Kei, Tetsurou called another worker, one who usually came in on weekends, named Taketora Yamamoto. He was loud and excitable, surprisingly good with drinks and customers, gave the place a nice welcoming vibe that was different than Kei’s. He came in, glad for the extra hours, so Tetsurou was able to avoid the stress of having nobody to work a shift with him that evening. Especially that night, when he was distracted and could hardly bring himself to smile. As soon as they’d gotten home Kenma had locked himself in his room with the cats, and Tetsurou had known better than to pester him. So they hadn’t said a word to each other since the ride back from Dr. Yaku’s office.

        The bar was relatively quiet that night. It was a weekday, and there was a good amount of people there to blow off steam after long days of work, but it wasn’t as bustling and exciting as it was on the weekends. Tetsurou was glad. He could sit at the bar, mix drinks, smile and make casual conversation. He didn’t have to put so much energy into it, not that he had much to give. His thoughts, his feelings, his soul, was elsewhere. He kept glancing up at the ceiling. Wondering whether Kenma was still crying. Knowing that he was.

        At around midnight, the two men came back.

        The ones who had come in looking for trouble a week ago.

        They weren’t as drunk today, but they came in with sour looks on their faces and anger in their bloodshot eyes. Tetsurou saw them and felt his temper begin to rise. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with them today.

        “Oi!” he called. His booming voice surprised them, and they jumped. “If you’re not gonna order a drink, then get the hell out.”

        “Who says we’re not gonna order anything to drink?”

        They walked up to the bar, pushed their way through, and sat down in two empty chairs. Tetsurou thought about kicking them out anyway. But he saw them pulling out their wallets, so he restrained himself for the time being.

        “Whatever beer you have on tap. Two.”

        Tetsurou and Taketora exchanged concerned glances, but Tetsurou went ahead and got them their beers. He didn’t take his eyes off them. He didn’t trust them. They gave him goosebumps, made him squeamish, anxious. He nodded at Taketora, signaling that he had it under control, so Taketora went back to work.

        As the two of them drank from their identical beers, they started looking around. They whispered to each other with heavy voices, and for an actual second, Tetsurou wondered if they were together. But he remembered what they’d said last time, and he saw the smirks on their faces, and he knew that they weren’t. They were here looking for trouble. They were making everyone else in the bar nervous. He considered asking them just why the fuck they were there. And he would’ve, if they hadn’t piped up first.

        “Oh, lookie here! There’s a pretty one. Almost looks like a girl, doesn’t he?”

        They were looking behind the bar, straight past Tetsurou. He whirled around.

        Kenma stood, frozen, behind the bar. He was reaching for the fridge where they kept the bottles of Coke. He must have come down, quietly, sneakily, to grab it and go back up. But he’d decided on the wrong day to come down himself. Wearing his shorts, sweater, socks, messy bun and deer-in-the-headlights eyes. At the sound of the voices, hooting at him, addressing him directly, the color drained from his face.

        “Kenma,” Tetsurou breathed.

        “I—s-sorry, I just wanted a Coke, I...”

        “Just a Coke? Let us buy you a drink,” one of the men hollered. Kenma shrunk back.

        Tetsurou immediately stood in between him and the two men. Crossed his arms, puffed his chest out, stood as straight as he could.

        “I’m gonna give you ‘til the count of five to get the hell out of my bar,” he hissed.

        “Aw, come on, we just wanna talk to that pretty little thing behind you,” they cooed.

        “One. Two. Three...”

        “All right, all right, we’re going,” one of them said, raising his hands. They both stood from their seats. “Well, since you’re kickin’ us out, the beers are on the house.”

        They made kissy faces, winked at Kenma, who had nervously and instinctively grasped the back of Tetsurou’s shirt.

        “Four...”

        Before he got to five, they were gone, though they left the air tense and uncomfortable. As soon as they’d left, he heard Kenma heave a sigh behind him, and everybody went back to their business. Tetsurou turned around, put his hands on Kenma’s arms to support him, bent down to look into his eyes.

        “Are you okay?”

        “Yeah, I’m fine. It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Kenma said. But he was shaken.

        “Maybe not for some people,” Tetsurou sighed. And it was true. For some people, catcalls and harassment like that meant nothing, washed over them. But not Kenma. “Do you want me to come upstairs with you?”

        Kenma shook his head. Tetsurou had to try so hard to not reach up and brush the stray strands of bleached hair from his face.

        “Can I just take some Coke?”

        “What? Oh, yeah, of course.”

        “Thanks, Kuro.”

        Kenma looked up at his face and managed a small smile—one that Tetsurou hadn’t been expecting. So it calmed his racing heart.

        “Okay. I’ll be up later.”

        “Hi, Kenma!” Taketora called.

        Kenma raised his hand in greeting, gave Tetsurou another smile (again unexpected), and turned and walked back up the stairs to their apartment. He took Kenma’s smile to mean that he’d accepted his apology, and he was able to feel relief for the first time that day. Maybe he and Kenma really could go back to the way they’d used to be.

        _Not that that’s what I want._

_But it’s what’s best, isn’t it?_

He hoped that the two guys never came back, but somehow, he knew they would.


	8. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS AGAIN 
> 
> this chapter is a rough one, involving sexual harassment
> 
> it's explicit and gruesome and I want everybody to know that before they read it. 
> 
> xoxo

**8**

**Kenma**

He was so terribly upset while he drank his Coke, upstairs in his room with only the cats as his company. And, though he knew those two men were no threat to him now, he still felt frightened. Irrationally, he tried to tell himself, but it never really works when you try to convince yourself of rational things. Those two would never come up these stairs, barge into his room, pester him while he was curled up in bed or typing at his computer. Tetsurou would protect him, of that he was certain. They wouldn’t even get past the bar if he were there. Tall, strong, determined to protect Kenma even if he didn’t want to fuck him anymore. And still Kenma was afraid. He was scared that the men would push past tall, strong Tetsurou, and climb up the stairs and steal his Coke from him, making it absolutely impossible to do any coding. He was close to his deadline; he needed to finish. He felt so afraid, shaken to his core, like he needed someone there other than his cats to save him.

After about an hour, Tetsurou still hadn’t come upstairs, and Kenma was lonely and terrified. So he did something a bit out of character. He took out a knee-length, wide dress and he slipped it over his head, until it was flowing and free and happy around his waist and thighs and legs. He stood in front of the mirror and he twirled a few times to make sure it still fit him. It was beautiful and a rich black color, not quite like the red one Tetsurou had told him to wear earlier. There was really no reason for him to be wearing it, but in his intimacy with this loneliness, this darkness, this brokenness, he wanted some sort of intimacy with himself, too. He forced a smile onto his lips, bent down and looked himself in the eye. He did have pretty eyes, at least. He could recognize that in himself.

And downstairs, when those men had whistled at him and heckled him and humiliated him in front of all those people, Tetsurou had protected him. Even after Kenma had been so mean to him earlier. Why had Kenma been so mean to him? Because of the bitterness, the dull ache in his skin when Tetsurou’s fingers weren’t on it? He should’ve just let Tetsurou think that he didn’t know he’d fucked Kei Tsukishima. Then Tetsurou wouldn’t have felt so shitty, wouldn’t have apologized over and over, for the first time not understanding what Kenma wanted: to never hear him say that so pathetically.

The tears were back, and that frustrated him. What was there to cry about, really? The fact that his best friend was hesitant to ruin the amazing, the wonderful, the fucking fantastic relationship that they already had with something as pointless as sex and saying shit like, I think you’re beautiful, Let me play with your hair, Your eyes shine in the moonlight, Hold me a bit longer? The cats were rubbing against his bare, shaven legs now, as if to confirm to him that he looked beautiful in that dress. He glanced over his shoulder at the empty Coke bottle and the screen of his computer. He was sure that if he sat down, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, kept going, he’d be able to get it done.

_But I really don’t want to._

Kenma needed to get some air. He was feeling suffocated, because it had been days since Tetsurou had been in his room, and usually he was in his room all the time, and he made it much lighter, much more airy. It was just stuffy now. It had been so long since he’d taken a walk, drowning in the night and the quietness and the magic of the city. While the cats purred, he put his high tops on and grabbed his smallest bag, just enough that he could fit his phone and his wallet. He tied his hair up into a messy bun because he couldn’t be bothered to do anything else with it, and Tetsurou wasn’t there to braid it for him.

As he was leaving, he decided to keep the lights on. He said goodbye, with a wave of his hand and a small smile, to Kuroo Jr. and Kenma Jr.

He slunk down the stairs, instinctively on his tiptoes. The bar was still full of people, though compared to weekends it was quiet—from upstairs he couldn’t hear anything. That’s how it usually was on the weekends. But Tetsurou hadn’t noticed him last time, so surely he wouldn’t notice him this time if he was quiet and calm and just walked out the door. He didn’t want to bump into Tetsurou, because then he knew he would get too emotional. He would start bumbling apologies, grasping to his shirt and saying that he really didn’t care if Tetsurou was fucking Kei Tsukishima as long as he still braided Kenma’s hair and offered him hits and drove him to therapy and pestered him, pestered him, pestered him, to make sure he was all right and knew he was loved. He didn’t want to explode on Tetsurou, not then, not in front of these people. So, in the darkness of the Black Cat, while Tetsurou was flirting with one of the people at the bar, Kenma snuck out. Nobody noticed him. Maybe it was the blackness of his dress.  

The night air was crisp and not as clean as he would have liked, but it welcomed him anyway. It was chilly, and his dress was short and his arms were bare so soon his skin was covered in goosebumps. He kind of liked it. As he walked, he pulled his phone out and stared at his screen. He scrolled through Facebook. Instagram. Snapchat. Twitter. Tumblr. All, and then again, letting the brightness from the screen light up his way. He knew the street that he was walking. The road that the Black Cat was on was a main road in the city that was wide and branched off into narrow alleys between buildings lighting up with neon signs in the night. But, on a weekday, it was quiet. Kenma felt okay. He really did feel okay. He almost never felt okay. But at that moment, he did feel okay.

He stopped feeling okay when he heard a voice call out to him.

“Hey! It’s you again! Wearin’ a dress now, ain’tt you pretty?”

He froze in his tracks. He knew he should’ve kept walking. Should’ve kept his eyes on the screen of his phone and just kept going. But the voice petrified him, paralyzed him, froze him to his spot as if it had painted glue onto the soles of his beat-up high tops.

_This wasn’t a good idea after all._

He glanced up from his phone and saw them, the same two guys who’d called him out at the bar. They were leaning on the wall in one of the dark, narrow alleys jutting from the road. They had cigarettes in their mouths, and they seemed drunker now.

“Ain’t got nobody to speak for you now, huh? Didn’t bring your big friend?”

There was no way, of course, that Kenma could respond. Could hardly even breathe. Was he still breathing? No, no. Yes, now he was breathing.

_Kuro, can you please come help me?_

_I’m a little bit lost._

“What’re you wearin’ a dress for, anyway?” one of the men jeered. “You’re a guy, ain’t you?”

Kenma glanced down at his dress. It had looked a lot better in the mirror, in his room, when he’d been alone. The cats, at least, had liked it.

“Come over here and explain to us! We’re havin’ some trouble understanding.”

One of the men stepped forward, and Kenma flinched. But the man grabbed his arm and pulled him into the alley, with such force and speed that Kenma dropped his phone onto the concrete.

“Why’re you wearin’ a dress if you’re a guy, huh?”

“It’s cuz he’s a faggot, obviously. He hangs around at that bar, after all, with all the other faggots.”

“Or a trannie? What-fuckin-ever, it’s unnatural,” one of the men hissed. “Places like that shouldn’t exist. People like _him_ shouldn’t exist.” He used the arm he had a hold of to pin Kenma against the wall of the alley, and the two of them leered in front of him. Their cigarettes burned orange when they inhaled. They spoke about him as if he weren’t right there. Their words stabbed into his chest.

“Still...if you ignore that flat chest, he looks like a girl, don’t he?”

“Yeah, he does. And I betcha he’s _real_ tight.”

Kenma’s heart stopped beating. He couldn’t feel anything but terror.

“Maybe we should teach him what happens to faggots around here?”

“Yeah. We’ll teach him what it means to be a man, since he obviously doesn’t get it.”

Kenma, in his silence, began to shake his head. He opened his mouth and tried to say something (though he wasn’t sure what he would’ve said), but nothing came out. He squirmed, but they held onto him more tightly and pressed him against the wall until the bricks dug into his skinny back.

“You up for some fun tonight, sweet cheeks?”

One of the men, as he said the words, took out his cigarette. The other man covered Kenma’s mouth with his palm before he could react. His skin tasted like tobacco, beer, sweat, horrible disgusting things. The man took his cigarette and dug it into the side of Kenma’s neck. Pain, searing pain, blinded him for a moment. He tried to yell out but was muffled by that disgusting hand. Then the other man took out his cigarette and pressed to the other side of Kenma’s neck.

_This isn’t fair._

_Kuro isn’t here to help me, so it’s not fair._

The men were laughing as they burned him. Terrible, screechy laughs that left eerie and painful echoes in Kenma’s ears. He was dizzy from the flashes of pain from the cigarettes and prayed that they wouldn’t light anymore. Maybe this could be the end of it.

But he knew that wasn’t true.

“Oi, lift up his dress, let’s see what’s down there.”

He lifted his hand from Kenma’s mouth so he could pin him with both arms against the wall.

“N-no, please—”

“Oh, look, he does speak! And what a pretty voice, huh?”

While one man pinned him, the other brought his mouth to Kenma’s ear, then reached down and lifted the hem of his dress. Kenma squirmed, struggled as best he could, but he couldn’t do anything. And he didn’t have the voice to scream. Not when he could still feel the burns, so clearly on his neck.

“Mm, nice legs. Smooth skin,” he cooed into Kenma’s ear. Kenma turned his face away and, in the next moment, he felt a harsh slap against his cheek and made his neck snap so far he banged his head against the wall. Dizziness overcame him. Dizziness, pain, fear, nausea, more fear.

_Don’t rip my dress, at least._

_It’s one of my favorites._

What happened next was blurry. He remembered hands running up his legs, touching his stomach, his chest, his cock, teeth sinking into his skin and laughter in his ears. He remembered being slapped. Kicked in the stomach. Thrown to the ground. He remembered his dress being torn, revealing his bruised body to the judging night air that had been so kind to him moments before. He remembered one man holding him, jeering, smirking in his face, while the other violated him. Brutally. Horrendously. Laughing the whole fucking time.

 

* * *

 

 

_You hold my hand the entire way to the ocean. You never let go, not once, not even for a single moment. You hold my hand until I feel like our fingers are melting together and I can brag that my hand is your hand, your hand is my hand, we have to walk hand-in-hand forever now. I watch your back, broad and vast, as you lead the way. I’m jogging slightly to keep up with your quick walking pace, but I don’t mind. Somehow I’m not getting tired. As long as you’re taking me somewhere, it’s okay._

_“To the ocean, right?” I call. “Even though we’re both scared?”_

_“Yes! We’re gonna teach each other how to swim!”_

_“But if neither of us knows how—?”_

_“We’ll figure that out later! First we have to get there. You won’t believe how beautiful the ocean is. Even if it is pretty scary, too.”_

_But somehow, I do believe it._

 

* * *

 

 

When the first man was done, they switched.

And in between, they threw Kenma to the ground again and kicked him until he was barely conscious. They spit on him. Fag, fag, fag, they kept saying. Fucking faggot you disgust me I’m gonna make you wish you’d never been fucking born.

 

* * *

 

 

_Your silhouette looks really good outlined by the blue ocean, by the golden sand. I could just stand and watch that forever. Wow, you’re so beautiful. Am I talking to you, though, or the ocean? Both? Neither? You’ll probably look even more beautiful when you’re in the water, holding my hands and teaching me how to do something that you don’t even know how to do. I still don’t know how we’re going to do it, but your confidence gives me strength. I trust you, somehow, even though before you’d grabbed me from the edge of that sandbox I really hadn’t known you at all._

_“Who are you, anyway?” I ask._

_“I dunno. Who are you?”_

_“Well...I’m me, I guess.”_

_“Perfect! I’m me, too.”_

_I like being me, and I like you being you. I want you to teach me how to swim, and I want to teach you how to swim, too. The sun is begging us to go into the water. We follow its call._

_“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you if you get too scared, okay?”_

_Okay._

 

* * *

 

 

They did.

Kenma wished that he’d never been born.


	9. 9

**9**

**Kuroo**

Tetsurou had told Taketora to go home so that he could finish cleaning up. There wasn’t much to clean. He just needed to sweep, take the empty bottles into Alcohol Purgatory (where, thankfully, he would no longer be able to have sex with Kei Tsukishima). Taketora had swiftly and efficiently put the chairs back onto the tables. It wouldn’t take Tetsurou very long. He hurried, too. He needed to run up and make sure that Kenma wasn’t too rattled from earlier—though he’d said that he wasn’t, and even managed a smile, Tetsurou knew better than that. Kenma was probably terrified. Tetsurou felt a need, an obligation, a duty that he had desperately put onto his own shoulders, to run up and tell Kenma that it was okay, that he would protect him, that he would be safe. Even if he had to keep the words “I love you” hidden behind his thin, determined lips. It would stop being hard after a while, right?

He was whistling as he organized the bottles in the room. His own whistles were so loud that he almost didn’t hear the door open at the front of the bar.

“Jesus, Taketora, I told you to lock up when you left,” Tetsurou hissed under his breath. He shoved the bottles wherever and trotted back out. “Sorry! We’re actually closed. Come back tomorrow night!”

There was no response, and when Tetsurou glanced around, expecting to see some poor drunk person who’d stumbled haphazardly into his bar, he couldn’t see anybody. But it couldn’t have been anybody else, not at this hour.

“Uh, hello?”

It was dark. Maybe he just couldn’t see them. After a few moments, he realized it must have been somebody who’d come inside, seen the emptiness, and retreated. Or maybe someone had tried to come inside and rob the place but, at the sound of Tetsurou’s whistling, decided better. Maybe it’d been those assholes who’d been pestering them earlier.

“Like I need more bullshit in my life,” he sighed. He walked back to Alcohol Purgatory. But he had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t go back to whistling. He began rearranging the bottles, making sure that everything was organized, when a different possibility occurred to him. He glanced up at the ceiling; it wasn’t common for Kenma to leave in the middle of the night. But it had happened before.

Tetsurou went back outside before finishing, just to double check. If anything, it would have been easy for Kenma to sneak out while he was working. Maybe he’d only just come back.

“Kenma, is that you?”

It was then, only then, that Tetsurou heard a soft, almost inaudible, whimper. It was the sound of a heart shriveling up, being swallowed in someone’s chapped, cracked lips; the sound of fingers reaching up to grab his hand, the sound of tears falling endlessly into him. He felt his own skin growing cold, felt his eyes becoming dry and colorless. He moved around the bar, tripping over his own usually-oh-so-graceful feet, and moved to the door.

Kenma was there. It was him. It was so clearly him.

And yet it looked nothing like him.

“K-Kenma...?”

He was on the ground, curled up on his side. He was shaking. This wasn’t the way he normally shook, not the soft sad innocent trembles that made it easy and natural to hold him. They were tremors, rivaling the earthquakes that had the power to raze this city to the ground. He had no power over his limbs as they shook, shivered, danced a sick, disturbing dance to a tune that Tetsurou couldn’t hear. Maybe even Kenma couldn’t hear it.

Tetsurou got down on his knees beside him and curled over his body, grabbed his arms, pulled him up onto his lap. He was light. And he was barely conscious. Ragged breathing. He had bruises all over his face, his arms, his legs—cigarette burns all over his skin--his dress was torn and bloody. He could hardly open his eyes through the bruising, didn’t have the energy to wipe the blood dripping from the side of his mouth, couldn’t pull up his briefs, which were wrapped around his knees. In the moment that Tetsurou’s arms wrapped around him, he cringed. But then, when Tetsurou pulled him onto his lap, he curled into his embrace, still shaking horribly.

Tetsurou had never felt such fear, such outrage, such utter sadness.

“Kenma, what happened to you?” he whispered, wiping the strands of dirty, blood-stained hair from Kenma’s face. “Can you hold on for a little longer? I’m gonna call an ambulance—”

He reached for his phone in his back pocket but, with whatever energy Kenma could muster, he grabbed Tetsurou’s arm and began to meagerly shake his head.

“I _have_ to. Look at you, you’re beaten up, you’re bleeding, you need to go to the emergency room.”

“P...please, no,” Kenma croaked. His voice so broken. When Tetsurou just stared at him, blinked, a sob escaped Kenma’s lips. “Please don’t make me go to the hospital again.”

How could Tetsurou refuse a request like that? A face like that? A voice that dripped with blood and desperation?

“Oh, Kenma.”

He bent his head down and he hugged Kenma tightly. He told himself, made a vow to himself, that he would never let go. He would hold Kenma like this forever, would take him wherever he needed to be, or wherever he wanted to be. Holding Kenma like this, feeling more frightened than he surely ever would again, he knew there was no way he would ever stop loving Kenma.

He was being terribly selfish.

“Who did this to you,” he heard himself whisper. He tried to pull away, so he could look into Kenma’s face, but as soon as he did Kenma’s fingers clawed at his shirt and he squirmed, buried his face more deeply against Tetsurou’s neck, whimpered again. So Tetsurou didn’t pull away. He just held Kenma more tightly, thinking, How the fuck am I going to survive the rest of my life without losing my fucking mind?

Time passed strangely while they lay there. The passage of seconds, minutes, hours, didn’t quite seem real. The cats were probably hungry. The bottles still needed arranging in Alcohol Purgatory. Kenma’s cuts and bruises needed tending to—Tetsurou would surely have to throw his completely soiled shirt into the laundry.

None of that mattered. The seconds didn’t matter. Tetsurou couldn’t move, not while Kenma was clinging to him and sobbing into him. Pouring into Tetsurou’s soul every horrible emotion he’d felt, every beautiful emotion he wanted to feel.

_Hey, remember when I taught you how to ride a bike?_

_I wonder if you remember._

“Kenma,” Tetsurou said. His voice didn’t sound like his own. “Kenma, I’m gonna take you upstairs and get you cleaned up, okay?”

He realized that he was saying Kenma’s name as many times as he could.

He waited, waited, waited, until he felt Kenma nod against his chest. Tetsurou put one arm around Kenma’s shoulders, snaked his other arm beneath his legs, kept him close. With all the strength he could find in his legs—how many times had he heard people cooing about how muscular those now-useless legs were?—he pushed himself to his feet. Kenma was both too light and too heavy, but Tetsurou knew he couldn’t show even a little bit that he was hurting. That wasn’t fair to Kenma, no, who was broken everywhere. Everywhere.

He struggled up the stairs. Kenma closed his eyes and just let himself be carried. This time in the truly literal sense. Though it wasn’t the first time Tetsurou had carried him.

It was a miracle that Tetsurou was able to open the door to the apartment, somehow get around the meowing cats who had grown sick of being alone. The lights were all still on. 

“Doing okay, Kenma?” he murmured once the door was closed. Kenma shook his head. Tetsurou expected as much. “I’ll get you fixed up.”

He carried Kenma into the bathroom. Managed to crouch down and gently lower Kenma to the ground. But Kenma’s latch around Tetsurou’s neck wouldn’t loosen, not even a little bit.

“Kenma, I have to fill the bathtub for you,” he murmured. “Could you let go? Just for a second, I promise.”

It took Kenma a moment, it seemed, to process that he’d even been spoken to. Once the words had found their meanings inside his jumbled head, his grip loosened. He leaned against the side of the bathtub, curled up, while Tetsurou turned on the water, warm but not too hot, to let the bathtub fill. Once the bathroom was booming with the sound of the running water, he turned back to Kenma.

“Can I take off your dress?”

Kenma nodded. He wouldn’t look at Tetsurou’s face. His body more withdrawn even than usual. Tetsurou’s fingers were shaking (my fingers never shake) when he clasped onto Kenma’s dress and gingerly, slowly, lifted it over his head. It was already torn, so it wasn’t hard. When the dress was off, he grabbed his briefs and pulled them down off his legs. They were completely soiled. He clumsily untied his high tops, slipped the shoes off and then the socks off. Kenma’s feet looked so nice, so clean, compared to the rest of his body. Ripped apart and shattered. Completely naked, Kenma shivered and hugged himself.

“Hey, it’s okay now. Nobody’s gonna hurt you anymore. I’m here.”

As he said the words, he lifted his palm and put it gently to Kenma’s cheek. Kenma closed his eyes, as if the touch calmed him, and nodded. By that time, the bathtub had filled enough. Tetsurou lifted Kenma again and helped him into the water. As it seeped into his wounds, he winced, drew in a breath, but Tetsurou shushed him and encouraged him and told him that it was okay. It was all okay now.

Though he was having trouble convincing himself of the same.

Soon, Kenma was sinking into the water, letting himself soak it all up. Tetsurou rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a towel.

“I’m gonna start scrubbing now,” he said. Kenma nodded.

Tetsurou scrubbed him, smoothly, carefully. He let his fingers, the towel, run across every inch of Kenma’s battered skin. His fingers tried to wipe clean everything that they’d made dirty, tried to sink in deeper than just Kenma’s skin so that he could feel some sense of security, cleanliness, innocence. When the towel ran across the bruises and the cuts, Kenma winced, bit down on his puffed up lip. And Tetsurou would apologize, would run his thumb along Kenma’s jawline and bend forward over the edge of the tub to whisper into his ear. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me, you’re gonna be okay, I swear it, I promise, I’m sorry.

The worst part came when Tetsurou had to ask, “Kenma, did they...?”

And he knew the answer because Kenma didn’t respond.

There were tears in Tetsurou’s eyes when he asked Kenma to stand up, just for a little bit.

“Will you let me do this? Or would you rather I...?”

Kenma nodded and stood up.

“Please do it,” he murmured, “I can’t stand the feeling, I really can’t.”

Tetsurou cleaned him—but he made sure to put some of it on a tissue. They would need it.

The last thing he washed was Kenma’s hair. He took the hair tie out and watched his hair fall in rivulets around his face. The tips sank into the water and moved there like snakes. He ran his fingers through it, gently, until all the tangles were out. Kenma closed his eyes and breathed to the rhythm of Tetsurou’s hands in his hair. The cats wandered into the bathroom, put their front paws on the side of the bathtub but dared not go any further, loath as they were to be near water. When the tangles were out, Tetsurou filled a small bowl with water and slowly poured it over Kenma’s head, watched enamored while the hair stuck to his cheeks and his eyebrows and his undamaged eyelashes. He squirted shampoo into the palm of his hand and moved it through Kenma’s hair, watched the bubbles floating up toward the ceiling.

And then Kenma was clean. But his injuries needed tending to.

Tetsurou let the water drain and wrapped Kenma in a towel and scooped him up again. He was breathing more easily now, but the tears hadn’t stopped flowing. Not once. Tetsurou kept him wrapped up in the towel when he sat him down on one of the chairs in the kitchen and said, “I’m sorry, I know this is uncomfortable. Just let me patch you up, then I can get you into bed. Okay?”

Kenma nodded, holding onto the towel.

Tetsurou reached for the first-aid kit that they kept in the drawer to the left of the fridge. And, on second thought, he poured a glass of water and handed it to Kenma. He drank it as if he’d been in the desert. Tetsurou removed the towel and dabbed his wounds with disinfectant. Warning him, of course, that it would sting a little.

“Nothing really hurts anymore,” Kenma said in response.

Tetsurou wrapped gauze around the big wounds. The gash in his stomach, the cuts on his legs, the especially dangerous black left eye.

“You kinda look like a pirate,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. But he couldn’t even bring himself to smile. He put bandages on everything else.

But there was something else he needed to talk to Kenma about.

“Kenma, before I get you into bed, I need to ask you for a favor,” he began. Kenma blinked with his one eye. Tetsurou got down on his knees, so that he was eye-level, and put his hands on Kenma’s cheeks. He brought his forehead to Kenma’s and blinked away the tears. “I need you to come with me to the hospital tomorrow.”

“No, no, I can’t—”

“Just for a rape kit. They won’t make you stay there, I promise. Luckily nothing’s broken, no major injuries, but...”

Kenma sniffled.

“...You need to get the kit done. It might be a little hard, because you showered and everything, but I still want you to get it done.” Tetsurou paused, brushed the corner of Kenma’s eye with his thumb. “Do it for me, if not for yourself. I’ll be there every step of the way. Can you promise me that, Kenma? Tomorrow? You’ll come with me and we can do the rape kit? You don’t have to report anything. Just do the kit. To make sure you’re okay.”

After what might have been years of Tetsurou kneeling on the hard kitchen floor, Kenma nodded.

“Good. Good. Thank you, Kenma.”

“Can I go to bed now?”

Tetsurou scooped him up again and carried him into the bedroom. The cats had stopped meowing, but they were following at Tetsurou’s heels. He grabbed Kenma’s sweater, his socks, another pair of briefs, helped him ease into them. Brushed through his hair with a comb and braided it so it wouldn’t get tangled while he slept.

“Do you want me to stay with you, Kenma?” he asked, as Kenma lay down and he stroked his cheeks.

Kenma nodded.

“Okay. I’ll be right back. Just two minutes, I promise.”

Tetsurou hurried. He changed out of his bloody clothes into a fresh pair. He ran back into the bathroom and put Kenma’s dress, hair tie, briefs, and the tissue, into separate plastic bags so he could take them to the hospital tomorrow. He included the towel that he’d used to clean Kenma. Then he ran back into the kitchen, put some food out for the cats, locked the door to the apartment, threw out the empty Coke bottle and turned off Kenma’s computer. It had been asleep for a long time by that point.

Finally, he turned off the lights, and he got into bed with Kenma. His body was still trembling, and now that Tetsurou knew where all of Kenma’s injuries were, he was careful not to put too much pressure on them. He held Kenma to his chest, made sure he was warm, could tell, of course, that Kenma was still terrified. Was still crying. Still trembling. Tetsurou just stroked his hair, rhythmically, the way that he liked, and held him. He was sure that Kenma wasn’t going to fall asleep. But if he did, Tetsurou wanted to be there as his blanket. His pillow. The reality he reached for in the midst of his dreams.

“I’m sorry, Kuro,” Kenma whispered.

“Shh. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“If I hadn’t left—”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear that, okay? It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe if I’d worn jeans...”

“Kenma,” Tetsurou breathed. Kenma’s voice sounded vacant. Hollow.

“Don’t leave, okay? Even if I fall asleep.”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Kenma let himself fall completely into Tetsurou’s embrace.

And, of course, he didn’t fall asleep. Not even for a single moment. 


	10. 10

**10**

**Kenma**

        Once, when they were younger—Kenma fourteen and Tetsurou fifteen—Tetsurou dragged Kenma from his front porch (he lived right next door and had easy access) to an amusement park. It was a day in summer, during a long weekend, and even against the blistering rays of the sun laughing down at them, Tetsurou was determined to go to the amusement park. Kenma was on his porch, in the shade, sitting cross-legged with his game system in his lap and bubblegum in his lips. The other kids who lived in the neighborhood had gone down the street to play some football, though it wasn’t as much football as it was indiscriminately kicking a flat ball around and pushing each other. Not something Kenma was interested in doing. Tetsurou had tried convincing Kenma to join them. It was just habit for Tetsurou at that point, making efforts to include Kenma, who, obviously, didn’t want to be included. He tried anyway. And that was all Kenma needed to feel a part of that community.

        But he only played for a little bit. With a wave to his friends, he trotted over to where Kenma sat, happy with the shade, the fact that his screen was hard to see outside, the splinters from the porch that were slowly digging into his bare skin. Tetsurou walked up comfortably, easily, with a spring in his step because he knew he was almost as welcome in this place as Kenma was. He grabbed one of the posts of the deck and lifted his leg and swung down in front of Kenma, smiling that large infectious smile. Kenma glanced up at him.

        “Whatcha doin?” Tetsurou asked. His frame cast a nice shadow. Kenma watched it wiggle under the golden sun.

        “Playing.”

        “As always.”

        Kenma nodded and turned back to his game.

        “Hey, whaddya say we go down to that amusement park,” he said, “and just spend the day there?”

        “That sounds like a lot of work. And it’s hot.”

        To make his point, Kenma fell onto his back and spread out his arms, as if to absorb as much of the shade as he could. Tetsurou snorted, raising an eyebrow.

        “You haven’t even been doing anything! Why are _you_ complaining?”

        “My laziness is just at a much more advanced level than yours,” Kenma replied.

        “Whatever. We’re going to the amusement park, okay, kitty?”

        “No.”

        “Come oooon!”

        “No.”

        “Great, let’s go.”

        “Kuro—”

        Tetsurou leaped past Kenma, just laying there, and cracked open the front door to his house.

        “Mrs. Kozume! I’m taking Kenma to the amusement park! Is that okay?”

        He cringed, heard his mother’s voice coming from inside.

        “Wonderful! Make him get up and do something. Take care of him.”

        “I will! We’ll be back in time for dinner. Come on, Kenma.”          

        Half an hour later, when Tetsurou had paid the price for the tickets and said It’s fine just buy me an ice cream later, they walked through the gates of the amusement park. Kenma didn’t have to admit to Tetsurou that he’d never been on a rollercoaster, or that he’d never had funnel cake, because Tetsurou knew that. That was probably why he’d decided to bring Kenma here, when he’d glanced over his shoulder during the football game and seen him alone (alone but content) there on the porch. Black hair clipped back with random bobby pins he’d swiped from his mother’s toilette, skin pale despite the tanning summers, eyes lazy but awake, natural and comfortable and like a staple there. People walked by and were surprised when they didn’t see him sitting there with his games, or playing with a stray cat, or talking to Tetsurou until the stars decided to come out and make tanning impossible anyway.

        That was why Tetsurou had dragged him here.

        They started big. With the tallest roller coaster in Japan, because, as Tetsurou said, Go big or go home!

        Let’s go home then, Kenma had responded.

        It was more fun than Kenma had been expecting. On the slow, terrifying way up the hill, sitting in the creaky carts, he’d instinctively reached over and grabbed Tetsurou’s sleeve. They were sitting in the front row. Then, when it stopped at the top, Kenma closed his eyes. Tetsurou lifted his arm up. They both screamed, and it was a rush, and Kenma never once let go of Tetsurou’s arm. It was the first time he really noticed how strong Tetsurou’s arms were. They were flexed completely.

        Then they did the merry-go-round. They were the oldest ones on it, but Kenma had insisted, and Tetsurou had promised him his choice after forcing him to go on the roller coaster (and Kenma kept it a secret that he’d actually enjoyed it a lot and wouldn’t be opposed to doing it again). The merry-go-round was nice and easy. Not scary, didn’t require effort, just the way that Kenma liked things. He rode a white one and, upon his request, Tetsurou rode a black one. It was only natural, Kenma said. You have to ride the black one. He watched his back, watched his muscles dance and his sleeveless shirt ripple, the whole ride.

        After the merry-go-round they went through the haunted house. It wasn’t scary, not even for Kenma, and they walked out of there breathless from their laughter. Tetsurou had probably been hoping for it to be scarier to give Kenma an excuse to hold onto him again.

        They went on another roller coaster. A smaller one. Kenma held onto Tetsurou’s arm anyway.

        They stopped for ice cream after that and, even though Tetsurou ordered because he knew that Kenma really didn’t like talking to strangers—it made him anxious for no reason and he didn’t want to get anxious now, not when he was actually enjoying himself—Kenma paid for it.

        “One medium bowl, scoop of lemon and scoop of strawberry for me,” Tetsurou said. “And a cake cone with soft serve vanilla and rainbow sprinkles for him.”

        They found a picnic table in a shady area and sat down, on the same side, to eat their ice cream and let themselves be tired from the heat. They were exhausted already, hot, drained of energy, hardly able to reach up and wipe the ice cream that inevitably surrounded their clumsy lips.

        “You got some in your hair.”

        Kenma reached up and, with his skinny fingers and a napkin, swiped the bit of ice cream that Tetsurou had somehow, _somehow_ , managed to get in his hair.

        “Thanks.”

        They went on the big roller coaster again. The teacup ride. The train-themed ride.

        When the sun was starting to set they agreed on the Ferris wheel.

        We’ll get a great view, yeah, yeah, of course we will, and we won’t have to move very much, you’re right, let’s do it, let’s fucking do it.

        Tetsurou talked a lot in their little private cabin, filling the warm, stale air with his cool, fresh voice. Kenma let his lips turn into a smile, leaned his head against the window, folded his hands in his laps but played with the hem of his flowery shirt. He listened. He didn’t need to respond, didn’t even need to be looking at Tetsurou, because he knew that Tetsurou knew he was listening. That was all he needed.

        Kenma was tired and stumbling, like an old drunk man, when they left. He fell asleep on the train ride home, even though he tried to play a little bit on his DS. When his head started falling forward and snapping up again, the way it does when children fall asleep on long car rides and their siblings laugh at them, Tetsurou reached up and brought Kenma’s head to his shoulder. So he wouldn’t hurt his neck, he would tell him later, when he woke up and saw the drool on Tetsurou’s shoulder.

        Kenma’s house and, so, Tetsurou’s house, was about a fifteen-minute walk from the train station.

        “I’m so tired. I’m not made for any type of physical activity,” Kenma breathed as he stumbled off the train and onto the platform.

        “Here, just get on if you’re so tired!”

        Tetsurou crouched down and presented his back to Kenma. Hiding his smile, Kenma wrapped his arms around the back of Tetsurou’s neck and let himself be lifted into the air. Riding on Tetsurou’s back, carried, secure—more secure even than in the Ferris wheel cabin—all the way back to his front porch.

        “Did you have fun, kitty?”

        He asked the question while Kenma’s cheek was pressed against his back and his eyes were drooping.

        “Yeah. Thanks.”

        “Sure thing. We’ll do it again sometime.”

        “Kuro.”

        “What’s up?”

        “Will you take me to the beach next time?”

        “The beach? That sounds fun. We’ll go to the beach.”

        “Oh, except I don’t know to swim. And I’m kinda scared of the ocean.”

        “I’ll teach you, Kenma.”

        “But you don’t know how to swim, either.”

        “It’s okay. As long as we’re together, right? Neither of us will drown.”

        “I guess you’re right.”

        “See you tomorrow, Kenma.”

        “Bye, Kuro.”

        “Thanks for today.”

 

* * *

 

 

        On the ride in Tetsurou’s stingray to the hospital, Kenma was thinking about the roller coaster. He was thinking about the merry-go-round. The ice cream cone that Tetsurou had known how to order. The Ferris wheel. Sitting on Tetsurou’s back and wondering, Is this what it feels like to fly? That was what he was thinking about on the way to the hospital, where they were going to ask him about what happened.

        “Where were you?”

        “What happened?”

        (We’re here to help.)

        “What did they look like?”

        “How do you feel?”

        (It’s okay to be scared.)

        “Time to test you. Is that okay?”

        “Kuroo-kun? He’s outside.”

        (We’ll only be a little longer.)

        Kenma began to tremble just thinking about it. It had been hard enough getting out of bed this morning, hard enough summoning enough strength to stop crying for even a moment. And he was walking with a limp. Tetsurou had pretended not to notice when he’d seen Kenma walking to the kitchen that morning, Kenma just knew it.

        Tetsurou had walked him so patiently through the morning.

        Are you ready to get up, Kenma? You sure you’re okay? You look better. Want something to eat? No? Okay, I’ll get you a glass of water. Want some tea? Your stomach feeling okay? Sure you don’t wanna eat something? Oh, here, the cats want to say hello. Need me to change any bandages? Let me help you wash up, let me do your hair, let me help you get dressed. Do you wanna wear your—oh? No dresses? All right, your shorts, then. I’ll tie your Converse for you.

        They were in the car and they were silent. Kenma couldn’t even chew gum. His mouth didn’t feel strong enough. He was wearing a sweater and his shorts and his Converse, his hair braided. There were a bunch of plastic bags in the back. Tetsurou had put them there.

        “Any music requests?”

        “Something without words,” Kenma whispered. He couldn’t see very well out the window because one eye was covered. Tetsurou nodded and played Chopin. That was what Dr. Yaku had been playing, too, Kenma mused.

        When they had parked, Tetsurou helped Kenma out and, in that moment, he must’ve lost some self-control. He smiled and, with the tips of his index finger and his thumb, brushed Kenma’s cheek. The spot just below his good eye, with a look of terrible sympathy and gushing affection and Kenma was both soothed and outraged by it. That touch, a ribbon of satin, a thorn digging into his skin, both a reminder of the ways he’d been touched last night and the ways that Tetsurou could comfort him. It felt like blue and gold and a dash of rose, like a Chopin nocturne that played while he was gazing out of a window of a cottage that sat by the sea and he could see the waves ebbing.

        Tetsurou’s touch on his cheek, as fleeting as it was, really felt like that.

        They walked into the hospital together, Kenma always a few steps behind, never so far that he felt a real space between them. He didn’t say anything, wasn’t even listening, when Tetsurou approached the desk. Which wing were they in? What department?

        “A rape kit? O-of course...”

        They took him to a room and, for a moment, Tetsurou came in with them.

        They asked Kenma to describe what had happened to him. He looked at Tetsurou, who gave him a reassuring nod, and he told them.

        In the middle of the story, he had to stop and sob. He felt the terror, the fear, the disgust, the shame, rising up in his belly and up his throat again. The nurses didn’t say anything, but Tetsurou sat on the examination seat beside him and held him while he cried.

        Once he’d regained his composure (or at least some semblance of it), he finished the story.

        Tetsurou handed them the plastic bags.

        “I helped him take a shower last night. I know you’re not supposed to before a rape kit, but...”

        “It’s all right. This will help.”

        The nurse handed it to the other nurse, who took it out to another room.

        “Kozume-kun...would you like to report your rape?”

        He hated the word ‘rape.’ Now he was a ‘rape victim.’

        That fucking terrified him.

        The question was one he recalled Tetsurou mentioning, but hadn’t really thought about.

        “What...what happens if I do?” he asked.

        “Well, they’ll open up an investigation. You’ll tell a detective everything you know, and they’ll do what they can to apprehend the people who did this to you. If you have good physical descriptions—which, I’m sure you do—that’s wonderful. And you have the DNA. And your friend, Kuroo-kun, supposedly knows what they look like, too. It won’t be hard to arrest them.”

        “Oh.”

        He looked to Tetsurou.

        “If you want to report it, report it. If you would rather forget it all, put it behind you...” His voice trailed off. Kenma swallowed back the inevitable tears, turned back to the nurse.         

        “Okay. I’ll report it. Who do I...who do I report it to?”

        “We’ll call a detective in to interview you after your test. Sound okay?”

        Then they asked Tetsurou leave and they completed what they could of the rape kit.

        When he was done, he walked into the waiting room and saw Tetsurou sitting next to another man. They were speaking in hushed tones, which seemed strange. There was nobody else in the waiting room. The man was tall, wearing a button-up shirt and tie, black slacks, nice shiny shoes. Tan, smooth skin and dark, gelled-up hair. He had angry, but kind, eyes. When Kenma walked out, they both looked up.

        “Kenma Kozume? Nice to meet you. My name is Hajime Iwaizumi. I’ll be the detective working your case.”

        He reached his hand out for a shake. Kenma couldn’t bring himself to shake his hand but, after a few moments, Detective Iwaizumi smiled and put his hand down.

        “Your friend was telling me what he knew. How about you give me your story, and we’ll track these guys down. All right?”

        “Sure, but...”

        Detective Iwaizumi raised his eyebrows.

        “But...” Kenma paused. “How does that help me? If they get arrested and put in jail...how does that help me?”

        “Sometimes closure helps. Seeing the people who did this behind bars will help you find peace. And if you talk to someone—”

        “He’s already seeing a psychiatrist,” Tetsurou interrupted.

        “Oh, right. Well, if I’m being honest with you, Kozume-kun, I can’t promise that it will really tangibly help you. But with a lot of victims it does. With some, it doesn’t. All you can do is hope that they get what they deserve, and hope that you can get some peace from it.”

        As Kenma sat down and told Detective Iwaizumi what happened, he had a really hard time believing that he would ever find peace from this.         

             

* * *

  

        And he didn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

       He wasn’t sure why, but the true gravity of his fear, his terror, his sudden emptiness, didn’t quite take hold of him—with its nasty, bloody claws and thirsty fangs—until he walked back into the apartment after the visit to the hospital. As soon as Tetsurou opened the door, letting Kenma go up ahead of him, he lost every breath in his chest. It left him in a horrible rush, made his chest sting and his stomach turn and his mouth feel dry. Like no matter how wide he opened it, he couldn’t get in any air. Tears burst from his eyes and he fell to his knees before he’d even reached the kitchen, clutching his chest, wailing. Horrible, gut-wrenching wails, screams, until he couldn’t hear any of his other thoughts except Get away, Get away, I’m in so much pain, Why am I so afraid now, Why did this happen, I did something to deserve this, didn’t I, this horrible violation, this _theft of everything that I am_.

        Tetsurou knelt down on the ground beside him and held him, but he didn’t say anything. He let Kenma wail. Weep. Sob, sob, sob, until he had sobbed so much that there was nothing left in him but the remaining trembles of something so utterly broken there was almost no hope of piecing it back together. Not even if your hands were experienced. Even potters can’t totally repair their broken bowls.

        He was left exhausted. Tetsurou helped him to the bed and said, “Do you want me to stay with you?”

        And Kenma replied, without quite thinking about it, “No, please leave me alone.”

        So Tetsurou did, without question, because he knew that really was what Kenma wanted and needed. And Kenma was so grateful.

 

* * *

 

        In the middle of that night, while he was thinking about Detective Iwaizumi’s eyes and the feeling of those men’s hands on his body, he got out of bed. He gathered all of his dresses, every single one. Even the beautiful, expensive red one. He gathered all of his dresses and all of his skirts, and he carried them in a bundle out to the kitchen. Tetsurou’s door was closed. He was glad. The cats were in his room, too, so Kenma really was alone in that kitchen. He dropped the bundle of clothes onto the floor, then began fumbling through the drawers. His hands were shaky and his nose itched and his eyes felt raw from all the tears. Finally, he found what he was looking for: Tetsurou’s box of matches. He never really used it, but he liked to have it, ‘for the aesthetic.’

        Kenma stood over the pile of clothes, lit a match, watched the fire for a bit. Contemplated tossing it into his beckoning mouth and swallowing it.

        But instead, he tossed it onto the pile of clothing.

        And he watched them flare up in beautiful hues of red, orange, the most beautiful gold.

        The smoke smelled like burning flesh.

        And the entire time he still felt their hands on his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in other news i watch too much Law and Order SVU


	11. 11

**11**

**Kuroo**

 

        Tetsurou didn’t tell anybody that Kenma had nearly burned down the building the day after he’d been raped.

        

* * *

 

        Kenma didn’t leave his room for a month.

        It wasn’t unusual for Kenma to not leave the house for a few days at a time, because he was like that. Tetsurou was accustomed to that. Tetsurou had forced himself to learn Kenma’s habits, to adjust to them and make sure that Kenma knew it was okay to have habits like that—even if sometimes, _sometimes_ , he was so agitated he could hardly talk. Not agitated with Kenma, really. Tetsurou could never be agitated with Kenma, not after he’d seen the demons in his mind come out and play on razor blades and red bathwater and weeks without showers and cold shoulders that were actually just exhaustion manifesting itself in a way that inevitably pushed people away. Tetsurou could never be agitated with Kenma. That wouldn’t have been fair, not to either of them.

        But Tetsurou was agitated.

        Maybe with the demons? The way that Kenma had spent that past few years of his life trying so hard not to talk to people?

        (But that couldn’t be his fault, it couldn’t, it _wasn’t_.)

        No, no, he wasn’t just agitated. He was fucking furious.

        Furious that there was somebody out there who would hurt him the way that they had hurt him. Ripping him apart from the inside out.

        “I can’t control very much. Not even my own body,” Kenma had said, curled up on the kitchen floor, glassy eyes watching the red flames. “But I can control this.”

        They had taken away from him authority over his own self, an authority and a control that had been flimsy and weak to begin with. _Him_ , why hadn’t they gone after _him_ , Tetsurou was stronger. Could’ve fought them off, maybe, could’ve at least pretended that he was okay, could’ve carried the burden on his shoulder because he didn’t have that many. Kenma had so many already—this just wasn’t fair.

        

* * *

 

        Kenma was in his room. He was standing in front of his mirror, wearing nothing but his briefs. It had been long enough by now that he didn’t need to wear the gauze over his eye, but the scars were there. The pale, yellow reminders of the bruises, there. His body looked like a patchwork—a patchwork, Tetsurou mused, of every beautiful textile from around the world, sewn together like that to create a masterpiece of unparalleled wonder. Yuzen silk in the center of his stomach, with pink flowers; jaspe fabric, coming down in beautiful orange strings on the sides of his torso; kitenge, bright colors wrapping around his slender arms as they flowed like silver water; khadi, woven intricately around his neck, hues of red and pink and purple like a sunset dripping down from his jaw to his collarbone.

        When Tetsurou poked his head around the door, to check on him, that was how he saw him. Standing in front of the mirror, twisting this way, then that. Clenching and unclenching his fists, those short jagged nails digging into his sweating palms, while he looked at the twists in his abdomen, while he blinked his butterfly lashes and gazed down at his pointed leg, his smooth ankle, the muscle of his calf rounding out perfectly. He was letting his hair grow so long, now. It was past his shoulders. The black roots were spreading out, threatening to overtake the sunny blonde that Tetsurou had helped him dye for the first time on his sixteenth birthday.

        Tetsurou tried to guess what was going on in Kenma’s head. My body looks strange from this angle—look, no marks here, almost as if nobody touched me at all. Almost like they didn’t tear the dress from my body and press their nails into my flesh. And here, right here, has that mark always been there, that little brown dot, that’s not from them, is it, no, I don’t know my own body, do I? They’re teaching me about my own body, and how ugly it is, from every angle, every angle, I can’t find a good one, oh, Kuro, it’s you.

        Tetsurou stepped into the room quietly, gingerly, making sure that Kenma could see him in the mirror. His eyes followed his figure.

        “Hey, Kenma,” he greeted. Kenma didn’t say anything. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t shaking, he was just standing. Eyes glazed, as if he weren’t really looking at anything even as he stared at himself in the mirror. His reflection wasn’t there. “How are you feeling?”

        “Just like always,” Kenma said.

        “Do you...do you wanna talk about it? You haven’t seen Dr. Yaku in a while.”

        “Ten days, four hours, seven minutes,” Kenma murmured.

        Tetsurou bit down on his lip and stared at the ground, felt the hollowness burrowing its way into him. But it wasn’t _his_ hollowness, it was Kenma’s, it was destroying him, now, too.

        “Ken—”

        “Sorry, could you be quiet for, like, a minute?” he whispered. “I need to check something.”

        He turned so that his back was facing the mirror. His back was the most scratched up, most beautiful part of him. Tetsurou saw it and remembered writing words on it with his tongue, remembered navigating with the tips of his fingers the hills, the valleys, the beautiful rivers and the stars in outer space there on Kenma’s back. He could almost see those words, that map, shining out from beneath the scars. He blinked again, and Tetsurou could have sworn that he saw those eyelashes stretch down all the way to the floor. A soft, strange smile turned his lips up.

        “Do you think the scars will ever go away?” he murmured.

        “I don’t—”

        “Be honest, Kuro. Am I ever going to look at my body again and not feel like the world is crumbling? Am I ever going to not feel like everything is just too heavy?”

        Tetsurou looked away. He couldn’t, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t look into Kenma’s eyes as he said the words so smoothly. Without even a hint of uncertainty, of emotion.

        “I don’t know, Kenma. I don’t know.”

        “Of course you don’t. How could you? It wasn’t even fair of me to ask. I’m sorry,” he sighed. “God, I hate the way they look in the mirror. Sometimes I manage to convince myself that they’re not there, that I don’t feel them weighing me down, and then I walk by the mirror and I see them again. I just shouldn’t leave my bed anymore.”

        Tetsurou couldn’t handle it anymore.

        He stepped forward, placed himself before Kenma, still didn’t look up into his eyes. Instead, he dropped to his knees. He heard Kenma sigh out again, perhaps in pity, perhaps in sympathy, perhaps in total and complete understanding. He wasn’t sure, he didn’t even care. He prostrated himself before Kenma and he reached forward and let his fingertips graze Kenma’s skin. And when Kenma didn’t cringe, didn’t turn away (as he sometimes did), he pressed the entirety of his palms to Kenma’s thighs. He put his forehead in the gap between his knees, he breathed out heavily into that space and then he clenched his teeth.

        “Give them to me,” he heard himself say, “give them all to me. Every single scar that you have, I’ll take it. Put it on my back.”

        “That’s not how it works, Kuro.”

        Tetsurou began to shake his head. He couldn’t even understand what he was saying. But he needed to say it anyway.

        “It doesn’t have to be the scars—the scars are beautiful, _you’re_ beautiful, it’s not the scars, you know. Just take the burdens on your shoulders and put them on mine. I’ll carry every single one, every single fucking one.”

        “That’s not fair to you, Kuro.”

        “Yes it is, it is, it’s my fault, so just put it all on me. Please, please.”

        Kenma lifted his hands and put them in Tetsurou’s messy hair. Like he was trying to lift the burdens instead of putting them on his shoulders. And when he felt his fingers, running through the waves, the curls, the tangles, felt the fingertips brushing his scalp like tiptoes on an iced-over lake, the guilt washed over him. Now he was putting more on Kenma. He was asking to be taken care of.

        But he couldn’t let go.

        Not even for a moment.

        “I’m sorry, Kenma,” he murmured.

        “I know.”

        “Let me take some of it.”

        “I can’t give any of it to you. You have enough already.”

        “No I don’t, not nearly enough. I can carry them better than you can.”

        “I’m sorry, Kuro.”

        “Can I kiss you?”

        “Why?”

        “Please?”

        “Yeah.”

        Tetsurou put his lips against the center of Kenma’s left thigh. He left his lips there until he was sure that they left a mark, that the lightness of them maybe balanced out the weight of the scars.

        “I’m so sorry, Kenma.”

        “...I know.”

 

* * *

 

        He tried to get him out of his room but, obviously, it didn’t work. And after he’d tried a few times, he came to the conclusion that Kenma just wasn’t ready, and he was okay with that. He needed to let him recover. Needed to let him sleep, cry, do whatever it was he needed to do. And in that month, he really never took a step out of the confines of his room. Sometimes he opened the door to let the cats in. He didn’t eat very much, and he lost weight. He let Tetsurou come in to give him food. Though he hardly touched it most of the time.

        Tetsurou was distracted while he worked. He was always plagued with the fear that he would walk upstairs and find Kenma in the bathroom, just like he’d found him five years ago, cuts in his wrist and skin pale and eyelids fluttering. He was so horribly afraid. He went upstairs at least once an hour to check on him. Neither of them was sleeping. Tetsurou had to call Dr. Yaku and tell him that something had come up, and Kenma wouldn’t be able to see him for a while. Dr. Yaku was very understanding.

        A month after it happened, there was a knock on the door. It was about noon, and Tetsurou was in the kitchen making sandwiches. The cats, at the startling sound, darted under the couches. Tetsurou walked over, looked through the peephole, and opened the door. It was Detective Iwaizumi.

        “Good afternoon. Kuroo-kun, right?”

        “Yeah, uh, hi.”

        “Is...Kozume-kun around?”

        Tetsurou glanced over his shoulder, at the closed door on the other side of the room.

        “He’s busy,” he said.

        “Right. Well, could I come in for a bit? I have some news.”

        “Sure. I’m making sandwiches. Want any?”

        “No, I’m okay, but thank you.”

        Detective Iwaizumi stepped in with a good-natured, firm smile. The cats remained under the couch, their tails sticking out.

        “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

        They sat down on the couches. The silence was deafening.

        “How is he doing?” Detective Iwaizumi asked. He said it quietly. He knew, of course, that Kenma wasn’t busy. Surely he knew.

        “He hasn’t left his room,” Tetsurou murmured. Detective Iwaizumi kept his eyes on Tetsurou’s, pursed his lips, nodded.

        “Reactions like that are normal. Everyone has different ways of dealing with it. But you let him know that it’s not his fault, and that he did everything he could—he survived.”

        “Okay. I’ll tell him.”

        “Good.”

        “So, you said you had news?”

        “Yes.” Detective Iwaizumi straightened his posture and a small smile played on his lips. “We think we found the perps.”

        Tetsurou felt the first glimmer of hope in a month.

        “Really? You have?”

        “We think so. But...”

        “You need him to ID them.”

        “And you, if we can.”

        “I don’t...I don’t actually know if he’ll—”

        “I can do it.”

        They both jumped and turned around. Kenma was outside of his room. Wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair tied up into a bun, bags under his vacant eyes. Always vacant.

        “K-Kenma.”

        “I’ll go down to the station with you. I can do the ID if it will help you,” he said.

        “That would help us very much.”

        “Kenma, are you sure you’d be okay...?”

        “I’m fine. Can we just go get it over with?”

 

* * *

 

        Five years ago, they lived in a different apartment. A much smaller one. Tetsurou’s father had offered to let them stay in a nicer one, but Tetsurou and Kenma were determined to make their own way. They didn’t want handouts, wanted to rely on themselves and on each other. They lived in a small apartment near the campus where Tetsurou was going to school.

        It happened during his very first year. He was at class—chemistry class. He sat in his lecture, surrounded by people who liked chemistry just as much, if not more, than he did. He remembered how excited his parents had been. The University of Tokyo? Tetsu-chan, that’s so wonderful, you’re really going places! His mother had gushed and cooed and called all her friends to brag about her smart little boy who was going to the University of Tokyo to get a degree in chemistry. His father, though he’d been hoping that Tetsurou would inherit the bar, was proud, too. A scientist in the family.

        And Tetsurou loved it. He loved the elements. The equations. Loved writing out the numbers and discovering things about the world around him, making sense of the things he saw and the things he felt and the things he smelled. How fascinating it was to understand, on such a detailed level, how the molecules of the pencil were interacting while he held it in his fingers. How intriguing it was to think about the ways that his body worked, the oxygen and the carbon and the nitrogen that interacted to make him the human being that he was. How utterly amazing. Sometimes, if it was late and he was drunk enough, chemistry could make him cry.

        The middle of his second semester. He was used to school now. Drank coffee on his way to class, wore the same sweatpants almost every day of the week, never had breakfast, had bags under his eyes from the studying that he was doing. Was applying for internships with pharmaceutical companies. Loved every fucking moment of it, every single fucking moment. He loved that his notebooks were filled, he loved that he had to schedule times to go see his professors and ask them what the fuck was going on, loved that Kenma pitied him because he was doing so much work all the time. They were the same, after all, weren’t they? Had something they loved, something they wanted to dedicate all their time to? For Kenma, it was the art of video games; for Tetsurou, it was chemistry. The fact that he could use his knowledge of science to really make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe one day people would take medicine that he designed to help them live better lives. That meant something to him.

        After class, he walked back to his apartment. He had studying to do. Kenma knew that. They hadn’t planned anything, but he wanted to take Kenma to dinner tonight, or ice cream, or something. It had been so long since they’d hung out, and Tetsurou missed him. Missed pestering him, asking him about his games, buying him ice cream and cuddling with him. He was always studying, wasn’t he? And Kenma, Kenma was always working on his games. His first had been such a hit—the pressure was on now. So he was going to take Kenma out to dinner tonight. Maybe Kenma would put on a pretty skirt, use his special-occasion-liquid-eyeliner, let Tetsurou try out the new hairstyles he’d been watching on YouTube to procrastinate.

        He walked up the stairs to his apartment, stumbled for his keys (wow he really hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night, had he?), opened it and called Kenma’s name.

        “Kenma! I’m home!”

        He closed the door behind him, searched the room for Kenma’s silhouette.

        “I’m turning the lights on, okay?”

        He switched the lights on.

        Kenma wasn’t there.

        He must have been in the bathroom. His computer was open, so he must have been coding something. Their cat, Kuroo Jr., was pawing at the bathroom door.

        He sat on the couch and waited for Kenma to come out so he could properly ask him to dinner. Kenma always appreciated when Tetsurou took the time and the effort to be ‘proper’ about things. To look him in eyes and say, Will you go out to dinner with me? Please?

        Ten minutes went by while Tetsurou scrolled through his phone. He didn’t even hear any noises from the bathroom. Kuroo Jr. was getting restless. Pawing, grumbling, meowing at the door.

        “Oiiiii, Kenma! The cat loves you more than me, come out and pet her,” Tetsurou called. He stood up, walked over to the bathroom, picked up the eager Kuroo Jr. and knocked on the door. He could tell that Kenma was inside. The light was on. And there was nowhere else he could’ve been. He almost never left the house if someone wasn’t with him—unless a friend had come and picked him up? No, Kenma would’ve texted him, he would’ve certainly texted him. He knocked on the door again when he got no response.

        “Kenma!”

        Still there was silence. Now, Tetsurou was worried. And Kuroo Jr. scratched him to hop from his arms and paw at the door with him.

        The door was unlocked, so Tetsurou opened it and walked inside.

 

* * *

 

        One week later, he’d dropped out of college and told his father that he wanted to take over the Black Cat and move in there as soon as possible.


	12. 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two left!!

**12**

**Kenma**

 

        “So, I just have to pick...?”

        “If any of them seems familiar to you, point them out.”

        “You can’t prod him on, Detective.”

        “I’m not, Counselor. All right, Kozume-kun. Take your time.”

        “Can Kuro come in with me?”

        “No, I’m afraid not. He has to make a separate ID.”

        “Oh, okay.”

        “He’s right outside. Are you okay?”

        “Yeah. I’ll be fine. Can we just get it over with?”

 

* * *

 

        “Did I do okay? Did I mess up?”

        “You did fine, I promise.”

        “I’m sorry, I probably messed it up...”

        “You were very helpful. Trust me.”

        “If you say so.”

 

* * *

 

        “What happens now, Detective...?”

        “Well, we’re still waiting on DNA.”

        “Are you going to arrest them?”

        “You have to arrest them.”

        “Your IDs gave us some pretty good ammo. So, yes, we’re going to arrest them.”

        “Thank God.”

        “Wait, Detective.”

        “What is it?”

        “Am I...am I going to have to testify? In court?”

        “Well—”

        “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can talk about what happened to me. I don’t know if...”

        “Shh, Kenma, it’s okay.”

        “We’re not sure yet. The prosecutor is going to try and cut a plea deal with them.”

        “A plea deal? You mean, they’ll get off more easily if they plead guilty?”

        “I wouldn’t phrase it like that.”

        “But that’s what it is, right? No. Kenma, no, we can’t let them get off.”

        “We cut plea deals if there’s a chance we might lose in court...and so that victims don’t have to testify in court. It makes it easier for them.”

        “But if it means that those disgusting pieces of filth get less time in jail—”

        “That’s fine with me.”

        “Kenma!”

        “I don’t want to testify. If they want a deal, let them take it.”

        “All right. I’ll tell the prosecutor you’re fine with that.”

        “Sorry, Kuro. I just can’t do it.”

        “That’s all right.”

 

* * *

 

        “Hello?”

        “Kozume-kun. It’s me.”

        “Hi, Detective.”

        “How are you doing?”

        “Terribly, but thanks for asking.”

        “I have some exciting news.”

        “Oh?”

        “They’re taking the deal. Six years instead of ten. You won’t have to testify.”

        “Oh.”

        “I’m sorry that this process is so unfair.”

        “It’s not your fault.”

        “But at least they’ll be behind bars.”

        “Yeah. I don’t feel better, though.”

        “I know.”

        “Shouldn’t I feel better?”

 

* * *

 

        Tetsurou had finally fallen asleep—Kenma had noticed that, for the past few weeks since the plea deal, Tetsurou really had started sleeping a little bit better. He was sprawled out on the couch, head resting on his arm (that would probably leave him sore tomorrow), still in his jeans and socks and t-shirt. Kenma watched the shape of his body, too hesitant and too attached to the darkness to turn on the lights and really look at him. The cats were curled up on the top of the couch above him.

        Kenma watched him for a little bit, from his seat on the floor, and then he stood up and walked to the bathroom. He closed the door so the cats couldn’t come in. He brought the lid down on top of the toilet, then he clambered up until he could feel how cold it was beneath his feet—and still everything inside him was so numb, so _un_ feeling. At this point, maybe that was for the better. Now, if anything else happened to his body, he wouldn’t feel it inside. He wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, probably. Though he still hadn’t really left the house except to go down to the police station.

        He leaned forward on his toes and opened the mirror cabinet above the sink, taking every possible precaution to avoid his reflection. Most days, he couldn’t bear to look at himself. So dirty, so ugly, so useless. He didn’t need the reminders.

        He grabbed the razors that Tetsurou used to shave his facial hair—those were the sharpest ones. He grabbed them, careful to avoid the blades with his delicate fingers (he would need to clip his nails soon. They’d grown out so much), and then put them into his palm and looked at them. Didn’t touch them with his other hand. Just stared at them, very hard, trying to figure out why it was he was holding them. They were silver, glimmered in the synthetic bathroom light, and he imagined what they would be like if they were as large as samurai swords. Would he be as frightened of them, as intrigued by them, then? Maybe it was their small size that so terrified him, so enthralled him, made him see red when he blinked.

 

* * *

 

        _“Kenma? Kenma, are you in there?”_

_Silence._

_“K...Kenma...Kenma, what are you doing?”_

_Silence, but the world is red now._

_“Oh my god, Kenma. Kenma, can you hear me? Hey, answer me!”_

_Silence, but the world is red and bleeding now._

_“Please answer me! Anything, anything, say anything!”_

_I say nothing._

_How could I not say nothing?_

_“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”_

_What vulgar language._

_“I’m calling an ambulance. Stay with me, Kenma.”_

_Who are you?_

_The one I love?_

_Yes, I suppose so._

 

* * *

 

Tetsurou should’ve stayed in college. He probably shouldn’t have come home at all that day, Kenma thought. He should’ve stayed late at school, the way he usually did, then by the time he got home everything would’ve been fine. Finished. Perfect. He’d be a famous chemist by now. Everybody would know his name, and Kenma would’ve been forgotten already.

        But, no. That wasn’t fair, was it.

        Kenma put the razor blades back into the mirror cabinet, closed it, and stared straight into his reflection’s eyes.

        That wasn’t fair at all.

        Because, as it turned out, the only thing left that Kenma could feel was how much he loved Tetsurou Kuroo.

        It was the only thing that survived the terror.

        The last remaining tie to this human world, this bloodthirsty reality.

        But, that had always been the case, hadn’t it?

        He heard one of the cats pawing at the door, so he got down from the toilet and opened the door. He picked up Kenma Jr., walked over to the couch with her in his arms, sat down on the floor, and rested his head right where Tetsurou’s mouth was. So that he could try to fall asleep to the sounds of his breathing.

 

* * *

 

        “So, Kenma. It’s been a while.”

        “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

        “Why are you sorry?”

        “Uh, well...”

        “Who are you apologizing to? To me?”

        “I guess.”

        “You sure?”

        “No. I’m just apologizing.”

        “How are you feeling?”

        “Not...not good.”

        “Right. What do you feel?”

        “Dirty. Stupid. So, so stupid. Scared.”

        “Do you blame yourself for what happened?”

        “I mean, yeah. If I hadn’t gone out by myself, or if I had decided to wear jeans instead—”

        “Nothing would change.”

        “How do you know that?”

        “I don’t,” Dr. Yaku smiled, “but I have a feeling.”

        “See,” Kenma sighed, “I don’t.”

        “None?”

        “Only the bad ones.”

        “No good ones? Not a single good one?”

        “There are a few.”

        “List them for me.”

        “I don’t know how to put them into words...”

        “Try.”

        “Like, the feeling when my cats purr and rub against my legs. When I starve myself for days, and then have a piece of toast. When I find a dress—mm, wait, sorry, not that one. Not anymore.”

        “Anything else?”

        “Kuro.”

        “Just Kuro?”

        “Yeah. Just Kuro.”

       

* * *

 

        Exactly two months after Kenma burned all his dresses, he woke up from a brief moment of sleep after a horrible nightmare.

        They came every time he slept, so he tried not to sleep at all, but that left him hating himself even more.

        He screamed, and then he caught himself, but it was too late. He heard the door crack open, felt the sliver of light from the kitchen (why was Tetsurou still awake) slide over him as Tetsurou poked his head in. There were bags under his eyes, a gentle smile on his lips, and Kenma could see, even in his daze, that Tetsurou’s fingers were shaking as they wrapped around the door. His whole body must have been trembling.

        “Hey,” he said, always with that smile. He hadn’t looked at Kenma in any other way for the past two months. Kenma blinked at him, rubbed his eyes, held back the tears. “Nightmares again?”

        He just nodded.

        Now wouldn’t be a good time to say it, right?

        “I can grab you a Coke from downstairs,” he offered.

        Kenma shook his head.

        No, not yet, either.

        “Do you want—?”

        “Come lay with me? Just for a little bit?” Kenma murmured. His voice was weak, muffled by his own uncertainties and drowning in a pit of doubt.

        “Oh. Okay. Of course. Anything you want,” Tetsurou murmured back. Like his voice was an echo of Kenma’s. He crept into the room, left the door open just long enough to let the cats in, then closed it and covered the room in darkness again. Without asking questions, while Kenma inched closer to the wall to make room, he lifted the blankets of the bed and slid in beside him. He didn’t put his arms around Kenma, because Kenma hadn’t asked him to, so he just lay there. Because that _was_ what Kenma had asked him to do. Their foreheads were nearly touching, their noses brushed, their breaths mingled in that strange and vast space between their lips. He could feel everything about Tetsurou’s body without feeling anything about Tetsurou’s body.

        “Kuro,” Kenma whispered.

        “Yeah?”

        “I’m sorry.”

        “What? You’re sorry? For what?”

        “I’m sorry for making you drop out of college.”

        “No, no, Kenma,” Tetsurou breathed. He couldn’t restrain himself then, it seemed. He reached up and put his hand to Kenma’s cheek, pressed his forehead and shook his head gently. “That’s not your fault, okay?”

        “Yes it is.”

        “No it’s not. I made that decision on my own.”

        “You were at my hospital bed for two weeks.”

        “We don’t have to talk about this...”

        “Yes we do. We never talk about anything. Things just happen and we let it go and we never talk about anything. Have you ever noticed that? We pretend to know each other really well but we don’t know each other at all. Because we don’t talk.”

        Tetsurou didn’t respond. He closed his eyes, but didn’t move his hand.

        “Will you accept my apology?”

        “No,” Tetsurou replied, “because it wasn’t your fault. I dropped out because I wanted to.”

        “But you wish you were back there. That you kept studying chemistry. I know you do.”

        “It doesn’t matter. I’m happy with the choices I made.”

        “If I hadn’t fucked everything up—”

        “You didn’t fuck everything up, Kenma. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life, how could you ever fuck anything up for me?”

        It was, somehow, a comment Kenma hadn’t been expecting. He closed his eyes, too, and the tears slipped out. He felt Tetsurou wipe them away.

        “You should go back. You should just leave me and let me fuck everything else up except for your life. Go back to college. Study chemistry.”

        “No. That part of my life is over. This is what my life is now.”

        “What is? Running a bar? Having to nurse some fucked up kid who sits in his room all day and can’t even take care of himself? Who causes problems every time he steps out of the house? That’s not fair for you.”

        “It’s not your fault, none of it is your fault.”

        “Yes it is, it is. They wouldn’t have done that to anyone else, just me. It was just me.”

        “It has _nothing_ to do with you.”

        “I’m sorry that I like to wear dresses and high heels and grow my hair long and put makeup on every day.”

        “That’s not anything to be sorry for.”

        “If I were more normal—”

        “Stop that. Please.”

        “Maybe...maybe if I were more normal, you wouldn’t have had to fuck Kei Tsukishima. You could’ve fucked me again.”

        “Oh, Kenma.”

        “You know, you didn’t have to do that.”

        “I’m so sorry.”

        “I know. And I forgive you. And it’s not even your fault.”

        Tetsurou was silent again. His grip was tighter, his body closer. Like he wanted desperately to hold Kenma, but wasn’t sure when the right time (was there even a right time) was.

        “Kuro?”

        “What is it, kitty?”

        “I love you. I love you a lot. I think I’ve loved you my whole life.”

        “Your whole life?”

        “Yeah. My whole life.” Kenma laughed a dry, quiet, broken laugh. “Sorry.”

        “Don’t be.”

        “I wish that we hadn’t tried to go back to normal. I like it when you call me beautiful. I like it when you kiss me. I like it when you kiss my forehead, I like it a lot.”

        “Yeah?”

        “Yeah.”

        He realized, in the shattering of Tetsurou’s voice, that Tetsurou was crying, too.

        “Why are you crying?” he whispered.

        “Can I...Can I hold you?”

        “Okay.”

        And then Kenma was in his arms and the world turned with such vigor that his insides churned, his heart fell to pieces, the sounds of Tetsurou’s breathing became symphonies reaching their climaxes in his ears.

        “I am so in love you,” he whispered, “so in love with you it kills me.”

        “Really?”

        “Yes. Yes, yes.”

        “You’re just saying that.”

        “I love you.”

        “What is there to love, anyway?”

        “The way you pout in between your sentences. The way you sit, with your legs all curled, and your back arched. The way your hair falls over the back of your neck. The softness of your voice, your brilliance, the way you never leave the house without bubblegum and video games and the way you always have to have so many sprinkles on your ice cream. How, when we were younger, you used to take naps literally every chance you got. The way you smile at the cats—the way you smile at _me_. The way you hold the Coke bottle up against your lips, even when you’re not drinking it.”

        Kenma began to sob.

        “The way you cry. It shatters me, Kenma, it fucking destroys me.”

        “Kuro—”

        “I love you. No, no, that’s not quite right, it’s not just that I love you.”

        He put his lips to Kenma’s forehead and held him more tightly.

        “I am so desperately in love with you.”

        Kenma grasped his shirt and buried his face against the warm skin of his neck and, for the first time in years, he let himself love.

        And struggled, struggled as hard as he could, to let himself be loved.

 

* * *

 

        “I’m still afraid to leave the house.”

        “Normal. Of course, that’s normal.”

        “I don’t feel normal.”

        “Nobody ever does. But you need time to recover. Time to rebuild yourself.”

        “What if I never recover? Never rebuild myself?”

        “You will. You definitely will.”

        “I see them every time I close my eyes.”

        “But you know they can’t hurt you anymore, right?”

        “Sure, but other people can.”

        “You’re strong. You survived. You can handle anything.”

        “I burned all of my favorite dresses.”

        “Buy new ones. As many new ones as you want. Be shamelessly and unapologetically yourself, Kenma.”

        “But I hate myself.”

        “Then let’s start from square one and build from there.”

        “What...what’s square one?”

        “Square one is learning how to love yourself.”

        “That sounds impossible.”

        “No, nothing’s impossible.”

        “I’ve always felt like that theory is bullshit.”

        “Well, I guess you’ll never be able to sprout wings and fly, but loving yourself, I think, falls into the category of things are _not_ impossible.”

        “I disagree.”

        “Start from the inside. Start from your soul, that thing that truly makes you who you are. It’s so pure, so beautiful, it is so worth loving. Tell me about your soul.”

        “My...soul?”

        “Yes. Tell me about it.”

        “My soul is exhausting.”

        “Keep going.”

        “It’s exhausting, and it works really, really hard.”

        “Good. What does it work hard for?”

        “It works hard to be better every day.”

        “There you go.”

        “My soul is exhausting, it works hard, it likes cats and Coke and it’s supposed to be happy and simple but my brain complicated things. My soul doesn’t like to be around a lot of people, but there are some people it loves.”

        “Do you feel like now, Kenma, you might learn to love yourself?”

        “I don’t know. There are so many other things to hate.”

        “Like what?”

        “Well, for one thing, I don’t know how to swim.”

        “Can’t you learn?”

        “It’s too late for that.”

        “It’s never too late.”

        “I need someone to teach me. I can’t teach myself.”

        “That’s true. But look around you. Look at the love that surrounds you.”

        “Sometimes I can’t see it.”

        “But you know it’s there.”

        “Yeah.”

        “Let it teach you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've seen too many episodes of SVU


	13. 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the final chapter (◕‿◕✿)
> 
> I sincerely hope that you all enjoyed my story. This one's probably one of my favorites that I've written. I really did put everything I had into it. All I can hope for, as a writer, is that you got some meaning, some enjoyment, some emotion from it. 
> 
> If you liked this story, I have lots more on my profile! If you're into Hetalia, Attack on Titan, or Free check it out. I'm currently working on a new Free project and a new Tokyo Ghoul project so keep an eye out if you're into those fandoms. I also have some plans for Yuri on Ice and more Haikyuu for the future...I'm very busy with queer fanfiction lol. 
> 
> Enjoy the final chapter! All my love to you <3
> 
> xoxo

**13**

**Kuroo**

 

        Tetsurou was patient. It was easy being patient. He’d always been a patient person. So it wasn’t hard being patient with Kenma—it wasn’t hard waiting for him to find himself, pick up the pieces of himself that were scattered on the floor and piece them together while his nails glistened a beautiful pink. (A color, if Tetsurou remembered correctly, he had sworn to never take off when he’d first bought it.)

        Kenma still cried. He still stayed in his room when maybe, Tetsurou thought, it would have helped him to leave. But sometimes he smiled. Actually, he smiled a lot more. It made everything a bit brighter. The cats noticed, too. They noticed his smiles, Tetsurou could tell. And sometimes Kenma did leave. In fact, on particularly good days, he asked Tetsurou to go out with him. Kuro, do you want to go on a walk with me? Those were the words that he said, but the words that Tetsurou heard were very different.

        Kuro, my love, my anchor, please take me on a walk? I need it and I need you.

        They held hands when they walked outside together, down the streets, and they walked so closely together that they might have been glued together by their arms. When they walked through the park about a mile away from their apartment, just about where Kenma started getting tired, Tetsurou would carry him on his back. It was a selfish thing to do, really. He wanted to feel the pressure of Kenma’s body fitting against his, wanted the hair on the back of his neck to stick up in response to his warm breaths, wanted to feel _something_ of the heaviness that Kenma was feeling every day. Kenma would wrap his thin arms around Tetsurou’s neck and, when nobody was around to see, kiss his bronze skin. Gently. Like there was nothing there at all. Tetsurou used to carry Kenma on his back all the time when they were younger, exploring the charted and re-charted lands of their neighborhood, walking to and from the train station while Tetsurou dragged poor Kenma on his weird adventures. He used to feel so bad at the end of the day, when Kenma was always so tired he could hardly stand, but he’d never minded carrying him on his back. It just felt like a part of his duties, something he was always meant to do, when he’d decided that he wanted to be friends with his quiet neighbor.

        “Do you remember,” Tetsurou asked on one of his walks, “when I carried you on my back that one time you rolled your ankle?”

        “Oh, yeah. I felt so stupid.”

        Tetsurou tossed his head back and laughed, and his cheek brushed against Kenma’s smiling lips.

        “You literally just tripped on a pebble.”

        “But then I started telling everyone that you pushed me because it was embarrassing.”

        “My mom grounded me because she actually believed you.”

        “And then I felt bad because I had nobody to carry me around.”

        At home, Tetsurou reminded Kenma to get out of bed in the morning. Take showers, brush his hair, feed the cats, do some coding, eat something, anything, even just a cracker, _talk when you need to my love_. He left post-it notes around the house when he couldn’t physically be there.

        _You smell terrible, take a shower._

_The cats need to be cuddled, please cuddle them!_

_There are TOO MANY COKES IN MY FRIDGE, drink some._

_Check your phone, because I texted you to tell you that I love you._

_Check it again. Because I texted you again._

_I love you,_ on the bathroom sink, on the kitchen table, on the bag of cat food, _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Just to make sure that he wouldn’t forget while Tetsurou wasn’t there to say it.

        Sometimes he walked into the apartment to find Kenma at the kitchen table, or on his computer in the living room, or in the midst of using the laser pointer to tease the cats, and it lifted his spirits. Because in these moments he saw Kenma as he truly was, without the shells and the burdens and the distorted mirrors that he’d systematically placed around himself throughout years and years and years of doubt. These were the moments that Kenma was Kenma. And in these moments he would look up at Tetsurou and say, “Welcome home, Kuro,” and he would blink and his eyelashes beckoned. So Tetsurou would close the door and walk over to him and bend over the back of the sofa and put his lips to Kenma’s temple, hold them there, hold, hold, hold. “Missed you, Kenma,” he would say.

        “It hasn’t even been twelve hours, you dope.”

        “Pudding head.”

        “Asshole.”

        But sometimes he walked into the apartment and it was dark, and Kenma was hiding away in his room. Usually under the covers of his bed, hair awry, eyes bloodshot, scrolling through his phone but not really looking at anything. It was on these days, in these moments, that the demons came out to play, and Tetsurou could really see them. Had he always been able to see them this clearly, he asked himself? Maybe now he’d just managed to convince himself that he knew them better, because he was letting himself love Kenma totally and completely. On these days, he was quieter. He moved more slowly. He didn’t touch Kenma unless Kenma asked him to—which sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t.

        “How are you feeling?”

        A grumble in response, usually.

        “I’m gonna get you some water, okay. What do you need from me, babe?”

        Either “Come play with my hair” or “Tell me how much you love me and then leave.”

        And Tetsurou was okay with that. They were healing together. They were loving together. He was getting better. He was getting so much better, that was the most important thing, of course. Tetsurou went to bed every single night, even on bad days, content with at least the fact that Kenma was getting better.

        And Tetsurou loved him. He loved him so much.

        As long as he went to bed thinking that, everything was fine.

 

* * *

 

        About four months after Kenma had burned the dresses, Tetsurou walked into their apartment at around noon with a plastic bag in his hands. He’d snuck out early that morning, before Kenma could have been aware. When he slowly opened the door, poking his head around, he saw Kenma on the couch. Legs tucked under him, chewing on his lower lip as he played on his 3DS, not even wearing his own sweater but one of Tetsurou’s big winter ones. The one that he usually wore to the ugly sweater parties. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him. Kenma didn’t even acknowledge that he’d come in—either he was immersed in his game, or he really didn’t care much. At that point, it could have been either.

        “Helloooooo,” Tetsurou cooed.

        “Hi.”

        “Whatcha doin?”

        Kenma didn’t look up. He just lifted his 3DS for a moment, then went back to playing. Exasperated and slightly irritated, Tetsurou waltzed over to where Kenma sat and knelt in front of him. He leaned forward until his body covered the screen of the 3DS, with his lips puckered and his brow furrowed.

        “Kuro, what the hell.”

        “Give me attention.”

        “You’re such a nuisance.”

        But Kenma finally looked up into Tetsurou’s eyes, so Tetsurou leaned forward and kissed his lips.

        “Glad to see you, too, my grumpy little kitten.”

        “Oh my gosh, spare me.”

        “Anyway, could you put down your game for like, a second? I wanna show you something.”

        Kenma sighed excessively loudly and rolled his eyes, made a scene just for Tetsurou, and closed his 3DS. Then he leaned back and crossed his arms. Tetsurou stood up and held out the plastic bag.

        “Guess what’s in here?”

        “A fuck for me to give.”

        “Damn, Tsukki is really rubbing off on you,” Tetsurou snickered. “And no.”

        He opened the bag and reached inside.

        “Close your eyes, babe.”

        Kenma sighed again and closed his eyes. Tetsurou took out the contents of the bag.

        “And...open!”

        Kenma’s eyes opened, and the dullness turned instantly to brilliance. He sat up a little straighter, he pursed his lips, caught his breath. It was a dress. Short, cut at around the knees. It was white and thin, with a satin ribbon around the waist, and it was covered in the most beautiful, colorful floral pattern. Tetsurou had seen it in the window of a store last week and had known, instantly, that he needed to buy it for Kenma. He hadn’t even looked at a dress since he’d burned them all.

        “K...Kuro,” Kenma breathed.

        “Do you like it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You like it, don’t you?”

        “I—”

        “Of course you like it. I picked it out, after all.”

        Kenma wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes were glazed over now and Tetsurou’s words meant nothing to him. Tetsurou could tell. Slowly, as if afraid that sudden movements would make the world crumble, Kenma got onto his knees and leaned forward. He reached one hand forward, fingers grasping and glistening, to touch the dress. He felt it between his thumb and his index finger, then he ran his palm along the front of it and bit down on his lip. He looked like a dreamer, and Tetsurou’s entire chest swelled. He wanted to cup Kenma’s chin in his hands, look into his eyes and see every color of the rainbow there reflecting the flowers on the dress.

        “Do you want to try it on?” Tetsurou murmured.

        Kenma nodded without a word. He took the dress tenderly, softly, the way a little kid holds a baby bird that has fallen out of its nest, in his hands. He stood up on the couch and took off his clothes. First, his sweater. Up from the bottom, over his head, thrown to the side and leaving his hair rising from the static and his cheeks rosy. Tetsurou watched his fingers grasp at the hem of his very own sweater and he might as well have ripped it to pieces. Then he took off his shorts, so short that Tetsurou hadn’t been able to see them from beneath the sweater. One leg at a time—first his left. Bending like a dancer’s up toward his chest, sliding the cloth down the smooth and scarred skin, wiggling his toes to get through. Then his right. Eyes cast downward. Finally he lifted the dress over his head and let it fall, without even touching it, upon his skin. Upon his outstretched limbs, slow and smooth it clung to him and kissed him and wrapped its arms around him with the petals of those flowers.

        “Kuro,” he said, his voice breaking, “would you tie it around the back for me?”

        Tetsurou tied it into a bow, and let his fingers sit for a moment upon Kenma’s hips. He bent forward and swept Kenma’s long hair over his shoulder so that he could kiss the bright patch of skin between his shoulder blades. He was so warm, tasted sweet.

        “How does it look?”

        Kenma spun in the dress. There were tears on his cheeks. There were tears on Tetsurou’s cheeks, too. He flew in that dress.

        “Unfairly beautiful,” Tetsurou replied.

 

* * *

 

        It was late. A national holiday that Tetsurou couldn’t be bothered to remember, so the bar was closed, and he and Kenma were watching a movie. Neither of them was really paying attention. They were huddled under a large blanket, fingers intertwined and breaths mingling. Kenma was sleepy, Tetsurou could see, but he didn’t want to go to sleep. The cats were curled up beside them.

        “Kuro, can I ask you something?”

        “Sure.”

        “I want you to be honest.”

        “Of course.”

        “I mean it,” Kenma whispered.

        “...Okay.”

        “Are you sad?” he said.

        “Sad? Am I sad?” Tetsurou repeated. “No, of course not.”

        “Do you ever think about where you would be right now if you’d really followed through? I mean, if you’d gotten that degree in chemistry. You could be doing something _real_ right now. Making a name for yourself and doing something so important...don’t you get sad about it?”

        Tetsurou paused to gather his thoughts.

        He didn’t want to lie to Kenma or to himself—of course those very things that Kenma was saying had crossed his mind before. Of course he’d struggled so much when he’d first dropped out. It had been the most painful decision of his life. He’d set a path for himself only to turn in a completely different direction and lose sight of the end-goal that had once been so clear. It would have been a lie to tell Kenma that he didn’t regret some of it.

        But it would also have been a lie to tell Kenma that he was sad, or that he would change his mind.

        “No,” he replied. “It was one path I could have taken in my life, one thing I could’ve done, but it was one of many. I’m here now and that’s what matters.”

        “How can you say that so easily? You gave up your dreams. Gave up being somebody.”

        “That’s not true,” Tetsurou said. He leaned his head against Kenma’s and held him more tightly. “That’s not true at all. I didn’t give up anything.”

        “What about being a famous chemist? Discovering cures for diseases hurting millions of people?”

        “Listen to me, Kenma.”

        He paused.

        “Are you listening?”

        Kenma nodded.

        “That’s not how I think about it, and that’s not how you should think about it. You wanna know how I think about life?”

        Kenma nodded again.

        “It doesn’t matter if people on the other side of the world know our names. It doesn’t matter if a historian never writes about us, if nobody recognizes who we are after we die, if the dreams of being something bigger never come to fruition. I mean, for some people, maybe that’s a big deal. But I don’t think that’s what life is about.”

        “What’s life about, then?”

        “Getting through,” he murmured. “It’s about doing the things you need to do to get through every day of your life. Building relationships with the people who help you do that, doing the things that push you forward, even if it’s in little baby steps. Life is about surviving and trying to find meaning in _our own_ little, insignificant worlds.”

        He held on even more tightly.

        “And I found meaning in the world you showed me, Kenma. That’s why being a chemist, being famous, whatever, none of that matters. It never mattered.”

        “I love you, Kuro.”

        “I love you, too. Please don’t ever forget it.”

        “I won’t.”

        “Good.”

        “I have another question.”

        “Hmm?”

        “Do you know what this movie’s about?”

 

* * *

       

        One week later. The weather is perfect.

        When Tetsurou wakes up, he has Kenma in his arms. He smiles and buries his head into Kenma’s hair, as deep as he can go. Then he squeezes Kenma’s chest and Kenma’s fingers reach up and hold tight to his wrists, like they’re bicycle handles. He blows out onto Kenma’s neck and feels him shiver. A good excuse to hold him even tighter.

        “Kuro, I can’t breathe,” he murmurs. So Tetsurou forces himself to loosen his grip just a little bit.

        Tetsurou has a thought, as he glances at the door of the bedroom, slightly ajar, to see the sunlight from the kitchen windows creeping in. The room is warm. Kenma is on his phone, curled up against Tetsurou’s chest and letting the covers fall from his torso down toward his waist.

        “Hey, Kenma,” Tetsurou says, teasingly, into Kenma’s ear. “Light of my life, sun of my darkest day, sail to my boat. Whiskers to my cat, nails to my fingers, laces to my shoes—”

        “Kuro,” Kenma laughs.

        “Sand to my beach! Waves to my ocean!”

        He starts to rock back and forth, tickles, makes Kenma laugh some more because he wants to hear that sound every second for the rest of his life.

        “The pillows for my fort, fireplace to my winter’s day, deodorant to my armpits.”

        “Ew!”

        “I have an idea.”

        “What’s your idea?”

        “Let’s take a trip.”

        “Where?”

        “Put on your dress and I’ll show you.”

        Kenma puts his dress on, and Tetsurou puts a sleeveless white t-shirt on, so they at least match a little bit. While Kenma gets dressed, Tetsurou gets down onto his stomach and kisses each of his calves.

        “Braid my hair?” Kenma asks. But when Tetsurou goes to get the hairbrush and the bobby pins and hair tie, Kenma grabs his wrist and shakes his head. “Actually, wait. I wanna leave it down. Just brush through it for me.”

        Tetsurou sits on the bed with the hairbrush in his hands and Kenma sits on the floor, leaning back against his legs. He closes his eyes—Tetsurou can see in the mirror—while he combs through every strand. He considers telling Kenma, as he always does, that he needs a haircut, but he changes his mind, because his hair feels so like satin and waterfalls and dreamy kisses on his fingers.

        Because it’s so sunny, Tetsurou puts on flip-flops and Kenma puts on sandals. The cats are eager and jumpy, no doubt excited by the golden light painting pictures on the carpet. Tetsurou doesn’t even bother packing a bag. Just sticks his phone, his wallet, his keys, into the pockets of his shorts. When Kenma walks out from the bedroom, he’s wearing a big, beautiful sunhat. Tetsurou can’t help himself. He rushes forward and bends down and wraps his arms around Kenma’s waist and kisses him, tastes the pomegranate chapstick on his lips and feels the vibrations of his body from the laughter on his tongue.

        “Still not telling me where we’re going?” Kenma asks as they drive away from the apartment. Down these familiar streets to nowhere and to everywhere.

        “You’ll see.”

        “Okay.”

        As Tetsurou drives, Kenma puts his feet onto the dashboard, slouches down in his seat, and grabs the edge of Tetsurou’s shirt. Perhaps afraid that, with these windows down and all this wind flowing around, Tetsurou might just float away, carried into the burning sun. Like a balloon. With his other hand he has to hold down his sunhat, lest it, too, be carried into the sun.

        They get out of the car once they’ve arrived.

        It’s been so long since they’ve been here.

        Tetsurou gets out of the car, walks around, and opens the door for Kenma. Grabs his hand and kisses it as he delicately steps out. Together, they turn and face the ocean, the golden sand spreading out like an entire universe just for them. Kenma grips Tetsurou’s hand hard (let me kiss every one of your fingers, in turn, to taste that pretty pink nail polish), and smiles out at the blue waves. The froth licking at the sand. He’s still holding down his sunhat, even though it’s not that windy now that they’re not driving at the speed of light.

        “I love the beach,” Kenma says, betrayed by his own tears.

        “I know.”

        They make their way through the tall grass down to the sand. Tetsurou takes off his flip-flops. Then he undoes the straps of Kenma’s sandals, because he wants to be the one to free his pale, not-calloused-enough feet. They step onto the beach together. Kenma takes a few steps forward, and Tetsurou sees the nervousness in his slow, cautious steps. He’s afraid that the ocean is going to run away from him if he gets too close, too fast. After a few steps, Kenma turns around, moves backward with his eyes on Tetsurou’s sunburning face.

        “Do I still look okay?” he calls. His hair dances a waltz with the ribbons on the sunhat, and his dress does a ballet. Tetsurou just smiles, and blows Kenma a kiss. Kenma reaches out and catches it in his palm. Maybe to save for later, maybe to crush there in his fingers, maybe to do nothing at all. The ocean lights him up. He becomes the sun.

        Kenma pauses. He’s smiling at Tetsurou. Then he turns back around and he starts to run. Out toward the ocean, as fast as he can, as fast as those feet will carry him toward the water. He spreads his arms out and sand flies up around his legs. His hat falls. Tetsurou feels the blood rushing through his limbs and he starts to run, too. Sprints, soars after the sun in its little flowery dress, spreads his hand out in some futile attempt to snatch his fingers. Suddenly he feels the water lapping at his ankles—they’re in the ocean now. Kenma is dancing. He spins, his arms span the entire world, face turned up to the sky. But he spins too fast. He teeters, loses his balance. But Tetsurou lunges forward to grab his wrists.

        “Don’t let my dress get wet,” Kenma laughs.

        Tetsurou puts his hands on Kenma’s waist and lifts him up into the air because he wants to see his silhouette set against the sky. Wants to see his dress twirl, wants to see Kenma smiling down at him, wants to taste his tears as they fall down onto his tongue and drown him in ways this ocean never could. When his arms hurt and he can’t hold Kenma up anymore, he brings him back down, and Kenma wraps his arms around his neck and kisses it. Once, twice, three times, infinite kisses that swallow him whole.

        But then Kenma lets go, and he starts to run again. Down the beach, at the edge of the water, hands clenched into fists and hair knotting. Tetsurou reaches out to grab his hand but it’s just barely out of reach. So he runs, too. As Kenma glides, he opens his mouth and faces the sky and he screams. He screams as loudly as he can for as long as he can and he just runs, runs, runs. Runs until his legs can carry him no further and his voice can scream no longer and he slows. Just enough for Tetsurou to reach him and hold him from behind, pull him in, warm him more than the sun can.

        “Let’s go back into the ocean,” Tetsurou whispers. He kisses Kenma’s ear.

        “But I can’t swim.”

        Tetsurou steps back and slips his shirt over his head. Kenma watches, then steps forward and puts his hands on Tetsurou’s bare chest. He’s looking at it very hard.

        “I’ve never known how to swim.”

        Kenma lifts his arms up and Tetsurou, gently, pulls his dress up. He folds it neatly before putting it on top of his shirt in the sand. Kenma looks back out at the ocean and Tetsurou can see in his eyes that he’s not scared of it anymore. He walks toward it, tucks his hair behind his hair, turns over his shoulder and holds his hand out.

        “Teach me how to swim, Kuro?”     

        Tetsurou grabs his hand.

        They fall into the ocean.


End file.
